Dave Bronfenbrenner and Scott Sehon began their run on February 23, 2003 in Sea Bright, New Jersey. Their plan was to run about 20 miles a day, with some days off and finish in early August. Many runners have gone before them in running across the entire country, but Dave & Scott's trip was unique. The two did not have a support vehicle or support people taking the journey with them. Almost always, runners will have a support team to help them out and a large vehicle where they can all sleep at night. Instead, Dave and Scott created a website, runtheusa.com, and with the help of a webmaster to coordinate, they placed their route online and asked the general public to offer housing if the two happened to be running through their town.

I knew of their journey and had read their website when they began. Naturally, most treks across the country wouldn't involve Austin because it's so far south and out of the way. Two months into the journey, someone on the RunTex forum posted a link to their website and so I went back and checked on how they were doing. They were running through Illinois, and my current project had me travelling to Peoria every week. It turned out that Dave and Scott were only miles away from me that very day. I gave them a call on their cellphone. Even if they already had housing secured, maybe I could get a chance to meet them. It turned out that they were spending an extra day in Peoria to rest and were interested in hanging out!

That night, April 14, I drove over to their hosts' house and picked them up. We decided to go to a bar downtown. I parked in the garage I usually parked in for work, and as we headed out, they turned down my idea of taking the stairs. I had no idea where the elevator was, but we found it! To my amusement, these hardcore runners took (and deserved) every break they could get when they weren't running.

Scott, Julia and Dave swap running stories at an Irish pub in Peoria, Illinois

The three of us relaxed at an Irish pub for a few hours and had a couple of drinks. It was so exciting to talk with them! To an outsider, it must have looked strange. Here I was hanging out with two guys my age who looked like they were homeless -- dark tans, extremely thin, and Scott had a full beard. Scott was proudly taking the opportunity to not shave once for the entire trip. We talked about work, school, family and racing. Dave shared his experience running in the Hood to Coast Relay, a race I'm very interested in doing, too. I learned that in February, Dave won the Las Vegas Marathon. Coming in 10 minutes behind him, Scott came in fifth. They battled up to 50 mph winds and sand, and still finished quite impressively.

Dave and Scott shared a lot of their experiences from their cross-country running journey - running in the snow, interviews on the road. I laughed about their pledge of having to drink a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 for every empty bottle of it they found on the road. The first sighting was in Ohio. (On their last day of running in Oregon, they found three!)

The two told me about the things they didn't expect. They had saved up money for their trip, but at that point, their costs were averaging about $6 a day. Their host families would cook them big dinners and breakfasts and then give them additional food for their run. Earlier that day, they had gone to the local running store in Peoria to buy new shoes. The owner realized who they were and gave them the shoes for free!

Dave and Scott shared how it was a challenging changing host families nearly every evening. Each family had different expectations and routines, so it wasn't easy to just relax after a hard day of running. Typically, the first thing they wanted to do was take a nap, but the family eagerly wanted to hear all about their trip. They were surprised that every night so far, they had a roof over their head. Secretly, they couldn't wait for their first night sleeping under the stars. They got their wish just two weeks later.

As we talked, I thought to myself about how we each came here from cities about 1000 miles away. "Sure, I flew here, but wow. they ran it!"

I had such an enjoyable evening with them, and wished them well as I took them to their home for the night. Dave and Scott ran all the way to finish their six month running journey in Florence, Oregon four months later.

Their daily journals, pictures and more details of their journey are available on their website, runtheusa.com. You'll find the above meeting summarized for Day 50.

This article originally appeared in Running Austin, a bi-monthly publication of the Austin Runners Club.