Army Vet’s run across America to honor fallen soldiers comes to an end Sunday after 2,140 miles

An Army veteran who has run 26 miles a day for the past ten weeks to memorialize soldiers who have died in Afghanistan will end his memorable journey across the U.S. in Galveston, Tex., Sunday.

Hundreds of marathoners will join Mike Ehredt for the last leg of his 2,140-mile adventure, dubbed Project America Run, which kicked off at the Canadian border of Minnesota.
Each mile of the way, the 51-year-old Idaho resident has planted a flag bearing the name of fallen American soldier.

“Just reading and seeing pictures, I wanted to give a little back," Ehredt told the Houston Chronicle. “And I wanted to do it in a unique way that was special to me and create an invisible wall, so to speak.”

Ehredt has made a similar journey once before. In 2010, he jogged from Oregon to Maine, placing a total of 4,424 flags in honor of those who were killed in Iraq.
"I haven't had one day when I woke up and thought, 'Nah, I'm just not feeling it,' " said Ehredt, who runs about the length of a standard marathon daily.  "I wake up and I think, 'Whoo! Let's go!' "
Ehredt designed the run from Minnesota to Texas so that the number of miles would exactly match the number of soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan, ABC News reported.
He stayed with a host family, many of them members of the American Legion or veterans groups, in each of 67 cities he passed through.

“I stayed with a family who had lost their son, and I had a mother meet me where her son's flag was being placed," he told ABC News. “There was even a lady from the Houston paper who did five miles with me, and I put flag in her hand, with the name on it, and it kind of gets them. It's powerful.”
Ehredt is set to speak about his journey at NASA’s Johnson Space Center Sunday, after he places the final flag at the edge of the Gulf.
And for those wondering what the tenacious vet will tackle next, Ehredt says there might be a book in his future.
“I figure if I have the patience to run 13 million steps, I could probably write about them,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “I think that's what I would like to leave behind.”