Run Luau Run

Dear Kelly, Michael, Kathie Lee & Hoda,

Recently your two shows featured a wonderful app called Charity Miles. For those who don’t know, very simply put, Charity Miles allows you to track your run/bike/walk while simultaneously raise funds for any one one of sixteen charities.

As Kelly so aptly put it on her show at the time, when one is “doing it” for charity, one is more likely to actually finish a workout.

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I have been running with Charity Miles on my iPhone now for several months, recently engaging in a one on one throw down with a runner from Florida to see who could run more miles over the course of a month for our charity of choice (Autism Speaks) – the loser was required to run the difference between our miles in a gorilla suit and blue afro. I was lucky enough to win by nearly 40 miles.

I am currently 22 days (I started on January 1st) into what I hope will be a 100 day running streak of running a minimum of 1 mile every day. As of this posting I’m closing in on 120 miles run for the year; my goal is to run between 500-550 miles by day 100.

This is where YOU come in.

Charity Miles donates 25¢ to my charity of choice for every mile I run (10¢ per mile were I riding a bike). At the end of this streak, I am hoping to have raised over $125 for Autism Speaks simply by doing something for myself – running daily. A friend coined the phrase Autism Streaks (get it? Autism Speaks + Running Streak x Charity Miles = #AutismStreaks). You have hopefully seen the hashtag in the tweets I have sent you. In the grand scheme of things, $125 is not much when it comes to the overall needs of charities.

Although I would love to ask you to match Charity Miles’ 25¢ per mile donation to Autism Speaks, I understand that autism is not necessarily the charity of choice for everyone – so my request is this: I would like to ask you Kelly, Michael, Kathie Lee and Hoda (and any readers who are feeling charitable) to pledge 25¢ to YOUR charity of choice for every mile I run during this running streak.

If the four of you hop on board, then who knows how many others will do the same? The four of you could inspire 40 people to pledge 25¢ per mile; those 40 could inspire 400 more. If I could get 500 people to pledge 25¢ per mile, that would raise $125.00 in donations for every mile I ran for the various charities of their choice – that’s $68,750.00 if I manage to run 550 miles over the course of the streak.

I’m sure you get these types of requests all of the time – but imagine what your 25¢ per mile donation can do! People signing on would have to live by the honor system, check back here on April 11th to get my mileage total (or they can go to my twitter feed – @luau – to see the automatic postings Charity Miles puts up after every one of my runs) and then send a check to their respective charities.

I would love to be able to say I’ve got the four biggest morning TV celebrities behind me because I know you would inspire many others to join in.

I hope you will help,

Sincerely,
Luau

PS: to any and all of my readers – should you like to join the fun, simply leave a comment on this blog post stating you pledge 25¢ per mile for the 100 days. Make sure you mention which charity you will be pledging 25¢ per mile to (and if you don’t have any particular favorite, feel free to choose Autism Speaks). I don’t have any system to enforce your pledge – we will be going on the honor system, but I do hope that A) you join in and B) you follow through. The more of you that sign up, the more pressure and responsibility I will feel to get out and run every day to keep the streak going.

PPS: to let Kelly, Michael, Kathie Lee and Hoda know that you want them to join the fun, please tweet them at @KellyRipa, @michaelstrahan, @KellyandMichael, @KathieLGifford, @HodaKotb and the @todayshow to let them know; and be sure to use the hashtag #AutismStreaks.