Experienced runners had warned Elena Helmerick about Nevada. When she talked to runners who had already accomplished the feat she was ready to set out upon ñ running from one end of the country to the other ñ they said Nevada would be the worst part.
Desolate. Lonely. Hot. That’s what they all told Helmerick, but that’s not what she experienced.
“I would run and all around me were multi-colored mountains and just beautiful scenery,” she said. “By the time I left the state, I felt like I owned it a little bit because of all the alone time I spent there.”
Helmerick, a former N.C. State cross country runner, finished her 3,200 mile trip last week, arriving just outside of Santa Cruz, Calif. She had been joined by her boyfriend/support team, Nick Lehecka, who drove an RV where they ate meals and slept.
Helmerick’s typical schedule included 15 miles in the morning, lunch, afternoon nap, 15 miles in the evening, and back to sleep before doing it all over again.
After graduating in 2007, Helmerick spent a year at an internship in Virginia. She decided that before she starts graduate school at Cornell University in the fall, she needed to accomplish her high school dream of running across the country.
Living on a tight budget, the two traversed the States, passing over the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains before running through the hot deserts of Utah and Nevada. Living on a budget, Helmerick and Lehecka borrowed the RV from a friend in Wyoming, and stopped on roadsides to eat and sleep.
“I really was dreading parking a 31-foot RV every day, twice a day,” Lehecka said. “Out of the 115 day-trip, every single time there was a place to park. I would have never imagined that.”
While Helmerick did her morning and evening runs, Lehecka would bike around the area, checking on Helmerick from time to time and providing emotional support.
“She was incredibly self-motivated, I was really more of a mental supporter,” he said.
The first couple of weeks were the hardest for Helmerick. The period included a trip over the Appalachian Mountains and into Ohio.
“My body was telling me it didn’t want to do this anymore,” she said. “And even though I didn’t feel like doing it, I kept accomplishing the 30 miles each day. So I obviously could physically do it, it was just a mental battle.”
Along the way, Helmerick ran into people completely intrigued by her feat, while others kind of brushed it aside. She met bikers, city dwellers and rural farmers, all the time trying to learn about a new area.
The worst part, Helmerick said, was dodging traffic and running on thin road shoulders in and just outside of cites. She even ran six miles on a freeway in California with her sister, which had its own set of adventures.
“We hid in a bush because we heard a police car and thought they were coming for us because we weren’t supposed to be on a freeway,” she said.
The car was apparently after a more dangerous criminal than Helmerick. They left the bush and finished her trek at the beach.
And though she didn’t do any excessive training before her trip, Helmerick felt prepared.
“I would say a lot of practices at N.C. State that would be comparable to the days I’d have to run 30 miles over a mountain,” Helmerick said.
She is now in California with Lehecka and their friends and family, touring the west coast before she heads up to New York for veterinary school. And despite the 115 days of running, Helmerick isn’t feeling any strange effects, other than an accomplishment of a high school dream.
“I got over it pretty quickly,” she said. “I thought there would be a weird transition, but there’s so many cool things going on in my life right now. I’m over it and going onto something else.”
