At some point in the past couple of years, I decided to celebrate my fond time spent in Southwest Virginia by running (and walking) for either 24 hours or 100 miles, whichever comes first, on the Blue Ridge Parkway. At an even more recent juncture, I decided to couple this to a fund-raising effort - unfamiliar territory for me.

The BRP is an internationally renowned road I fell in love with in 2002, when I first became a Virginia resident. In August of that year, I had what romantics and mystics call a transcendental experience when I covered approximately 240 miles of the Parkway between Asheville, North Carolina and Roanoke, Virginia on foot over a period of four days. By glorious design, the Parkway has no overhead lights and very few surface-road crossings; I was alone except for a 15-pound backpack and a full moon. I met some kind and interesting people along the way, and detailed this quiet adventure in the March/April 2004 issue of Marathon & Beyond.

It wasn't terribly long afterward that the idea of doing a more organized and purposeful long run on the Parkway started coalescing in my mind. The National Park Service relies heavily on donations for optimal upkeep of the lands in its bailiwick, and as someone who once averaged over 100 miles of running a week for an entire year I wondered what it would be like to do a "century" in a day, on my own terms. The seeds for the "True Blue Run of the Century" were thus sown.

In the intervening years, I've put in a great deal of running on the Parkway, which was a shade over two miles from my front door when I lived in the Roanoke Valley. It makes perfect sense, then, to enlist as a partner in this fund-raising effort the most active group helping to maintain and restore this national treasure I am aware of -- the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation. In late 2007 I approached the Foundation's leadership with the details of my plan. Executive Director Houck Medford immediately offered to help with the necessary permits and other administrata, and the organization's embracing of the endeavor has kicked up my already considerable motivation and commitment a few notches.

My favorite road is well on its way to losing everything that makes it so special. It's a National Park, but the current presidential administration appears resolutely unaware of its existence and importance. Givan that there are some 42 open Parkway-related job positions to be filled but no money to fund them -- leaving the Parkway at an abysmal 20 percent of full staffing -- it's clear that the federal government is simply not interested in fulfilling the legacy of its outdoors-friendly predecessors (details).

My plan is to set out from Milepost 100 in the early the morning of September 11, 2008 -- 73 years to the day after construction on the Blue Ridge Parkway was begun and 21 to the day after it was completed -- with the goal of reaching Milepost 0 near Waynesville within 24 hours. (A less-than-detailed map of the region I'll be running through is here.) I'll have a support vehicle laden with enough electrolyte- and calorie-rich comestibles to keep me upright, a few extra pairs of socks, and so on. I don't expect to do this without stopping or walking, but I also expect to finish in gentle post-twilight darkness and with both my legs and my sensibilities intact.

If interested, you can help in a number of ways. The mechanics of donating are still being finalized, but Parkway enthusiasts will have the option of pledging either a lump sum or a dollar amount per mile covered. A page where you can donate securely by credit card, checking account, or PayPal balance is being set up as I write this. Finally, if you couldn't care less about this bizarre undertaking but would like to donate to the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation anyway, visit this page.

Sometime this spring I'll be setting up a blog to keep interested visitors informed of news and developments pertaining to this run and the Parkway, my training, and all of the usual stuff, so please bookmark this page and come back often. Your support -- be it monetary or verbal -- is immensely appreciated.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully for being a part of an effort to help ensure the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway's availability for our and future generations.