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THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2024
Cross Country
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Two Longtime Friends Complete Challenge of Running Half Marathons in Every State
Robin Bienvenu and Kelly Styslinger travelled to a half marathon in each of the 50 states over the past 10 years, including the Run Crazy Horse Half Marathon near Mount Rushmore in South Dakota and the Bird-in-Hand Half Marathon in Pennsylvania (pictured at right).
SPORTS
By Madoline Markham Koonce
W
hat’s it like to run a half marathon in every state in the U.S.? Kelly Styslinger and Robin Bienvenu can tell you. It all started a little more than 10 years ago when a friend of Bienvenu’s talked her into doing her first half marathon. At the time, Bienvenu had never been to Disney World, so she decided to run the Disney Princess Half Marathon in Orlando for her 50th birthday and asked Styslinger, a friend since their days together as students at Samford University, to join her. Bienvenu found Hal Higdon’s half marathon program, and before long the two friends found the run at Disney to be “super fun.”
Around that time, Bienvenu had also started talking about how she wanted to travel more “to see Savannah, to Seattle and everything in between.” With that in mind, Styslinger went looking for a second race idea and came across a challenge to run a half marathon in all 50 states, so for Bienvenu’s birthday, Styslinger gave her a three-ring binder with a map of the United States and the state of Florida checked off. The challenge was on. “She got me to run the first one, and I talked her into running the rest,” Styslinger said. For the past decade, that’s what they have done, See 50 STATES, page 6