COMMUNITY: Success, failure for Team 99

Editor's note: Daren Schumaker and Dennis Lee are crossing all of Iowa's 99 counties, raising money for the American Cancer Society. The two have completed 42 counties, the latest a trip across Ringgold County last Sunday. Below are excerpts from two trips before that one.

By Daren Schumaker, community contributor

After completing at least marathon distance runs across 40 of Iowa's 99 counties, we had become pretty confident we'd seen about everything this journey was going to throw at us.

We'd laced up our shoes 40 times and had successfully celebrated the completion of 40 “cross-county” runs. Nothing could stop us, or could it?

On March 9, Team 99 Counties failed. That's right, we failed. We gave up. We declined to finish.

After traveling for more than five hours the night before, we awoke in Sheldon to clouds and rain. From the start we knew it was going to be bad. Before long, the puddles on the paved trail turned into a cascade of water. Soaked from head to toe, standing in a brisk wind that dropped the 34 degree air temperature to below freezing, we pulled the plug.

Failure. We were anything but happy, but after the warmth returned to our bodies, we started to reflect on what had happened.

Had we really failed?

After thinking about things, we realized we had not failed. You will fail, but as long as you try and keep trying, you will eventually succeed.

LOUISA COUNTY

Talk is cheap.

How often have you declared you would do something, proclaiming your genuine intent, only to back out when you realized things weren't going to be as easy as you thought?

We've all done it.

Team 99 Counties welcomed a guest on March 23, the first to cross an entire county.

We ran through Wyman, danced toward and through Wapello, and headed toward the Mississippi River at Toolesboro. We were challenged in many ways as we crossed Louisa County in 3:52:53 - running 26.68 miles from west to east.

But this run wasn't about what we did. It was about what Jon Swails did. Swails followed through.

Jon brought things back into focus for Dennis and I. This journey isn't about us. It's about motivating others to do what is extraordinary to them.

Become active and take your health into your own hands.

Inspiration through perspiration.

• To make a donation or follow the team, check out more to these stories at Team 99 Counties on Facebook or at www.team99counties.com