Miss Melia

Today I had the opportunity to run a 5k for a darling little friend of mine named Melia. I was blessed to meet Miss Melia and her mom at the IRSF conference back in June this year.  

You see, Melia has Rett syndrome just like Leah and her brilliant mom set up a 5k run for Rett syndrome awareness month. But the brilliant thing about this run was that anyone could run, walk, crawl it from ANYWHERE. You just had to do it during the month of October. 

Melia and her family did their run in Canada, where they live. I did mine in Iowa. And lots of others ran in lots of other parts of the world.

But we all ran for Miss Melia. We all ran for Rett syndrome. 

And, as an added bonus, when trying to find a good 5k route, I decided to venture onto a new trail (so far I have only run on the path that parallels the streets here) and I was richly rewarded. It was a beautiful path surrounded by lush, color-changing vegetation (and corn fields too!) that made me feel like I was on my old trails in  California and New Hampshire. I will definitely be revisiting it soon. 

Thanks for the run, Miss Melia, and thanks for being an inspiration and the cutest little friend!