Running 339 miles across the state

Let's go girls, we are raising money for abortion care and trans mutual aid!

In two weeks, I and 11 other people (plus our amazing drivers), will be running 339 miles across Iowa.

Relay Iowa is the world’s longest relay run, and the course winds through hills, flat lands, and small towns. It’s a physical reminder that Iowa’s landscape is more complex than it seems when you fly over. This year the relay is being held June 7-9. We begin in Sioux City on Friday morning and run all the way to Dubuque by Sunday afternoon.

Last year, was my first year running the relay. I got recruited by newsletter reader, and all-around good human, Beau Anderson, who had run the relay before.

Through the Discord that I run for newsletter subscribers, Beau and I and so many others recruited a team, which we named High Fructose Corn Sweat, after the corn sweat phenomena that makes midwestern summers so humid.

Many of the people on the team were people who read the newsletter, but so many others were just people who wanted to run, have some fun, and raise some money. And we did. We ate gas station sushi and lots of breakfast pizza, I swear to god I saw a bobcat at 2 am, and a lot of us pooped in cornfields. Me? I destroyed a port-a-potty at the Feild of Dreams. We slept on park benches, in vans, on wrestling mats in wayward high school gyms. While on that journey, we raised over $5,000 for the Iowa Abortion Access Fund and Trans Mutual Aid.

And we want to do that again!

Here is how you can help

• The team has an Amazon wishlist of items we need for the run.

• We have a team merchandise store where part of the proceeds do to Iowa Abortion Access fund.

• You can donate to Iowa Abortion Access fund through our dedicated fundraising page.

• You can also donate to Iowa Trans Mutual Aid through our dedicated fundraising page.

• You can also follow along the journey on the team’s Instagram page.

This week, I wrote a newsletter about what it means to stay in a place that so many people leave. I wrote it not to castigate people for leaving. Lord knows, sometimes you have to get out and save your own life. A lot of my writing and reporting reflects that truth. But for those of us who stay, we need champions too. Running to raise money for abortion access and trans rights in a state where LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive rights are under attack, is one of the many ways I and my friends are fighting for this place.

As I wrote in a newsletter last year about running in 2023:

For so long, I’ve used running as a way to build power, strength, and hold myself together. But running has also cracked me open — made me vulnerable, a mass of muscle and body aches. Running these days, at 41, in a world marred by pandemic and loss, I feel how fragile my hold on this world is. Any moment any number of things could happen and this could all end. My body could fall and I could fail. It’s terrifying, but it also makes these moments running with my friends all the more beautiful and vibrant. We run on the edge of sorrow. We run because of our sorrow and our anxieties and our fears, our breakups, our worries. But together, somehow, in those moments we find luminous joy.

And we run to remind ourselves that this place is ours too and we belong here.

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Support team High Fructose Corn Sweat!

Want to know more?

• Team member and gas station sushi evangelist, Molly Monk, wrote about Relay Iowa and chronic illness for Outside Magazine.

• Also, running celebrity and MYAM reader Brenden Leonard ran Relay Iowa in 2023 and wrote about it.