Strange ends Box Run with emotional note
Writes names of 40 kids he ran for in the sand on Spanish beach
Mike Strange said he was thinking of “a little angel” when he finished his Box Run El Camino this week.
Strange, 48, wrapped up his 890kilometre trek along the El Camino trail in Santiago de Compostella, Spain, then walked another 90 km to Fisterra — it means ‘end of the earth’ in Spanish — on the country’s North Atlantic coast.
“It’s been a great experience … a great, great adventure,” he said Monday, in a video posted to his Facebook page, where he has been sending updates two or three times a day.
Strong ocean winds made much of the audio inaudible, but he thanked viewers for their support and donations during his 31-day hike that started Sept. 1 in St. Pied de Port, France, and saw him walk and run along the dirt trail through the Pyrenees mountain range.
He slept mostly in hostels, lugging a 5.4-kilogram backpack as he encountered people, animals and people pulling or riding animals along the way.
Fisterra was the official end of the journey, but the emotional one came the day before, on Day 30 — the date he originally planned to finish.
Every day of the trip was dedicated to a child who is fighting, or had lost a fight, with cancer.
The full list of names is at Box-
Run.org, where donations can be made to the McMaster University stem cell and cancer research units and for Ronald McDonald Houses. It’s not known yet how much money was raised.
“Today is a special dedication to a little angel, Kelsey Hill,” Strange said Sunday, calling the Stevensville girl his inspiration and the reason he started Heater’s Heroes and his Box Runs to help sick kids.
“Kelsey is kind of behind all this running that I do. I met her in 2011. Just the year before, she had headaches, she was dizzy. She thought it was migraines.
“It was a rare type of brain tumour — she went through all the chemo, radiation, everything that you can imagine.”
Strange said doctors thought they had removed all the tumour during surgery, and Kelsey returned to Stevensville Public School where, he said, she was student council president.
“Unfortunately (it returned) and in 2011 they told her it was touching her brain stem, and there’s not much you can do after that.”
She was 13 years old when she died Dec. 13, 2011.
On the final day, on the beach at Fisterra, Strange wrote the names of all 40 kids he ran for in the sand and posted the photo online.