Runners' goal is clean water

RALEIGH -- Running 90 laps around Moore Square doesn't sound tough.

Sure, it's a 30 mile-trip around a single block, making 360 left turns in a row -- a feat that turns the body into a human stock car.

But Lansing Brewer has already run around the world in marathon-sized chunks, raising money and attention for clean drinking water worldwide. So a few hours circling downtown Raleigh seemed like cake.

"I know," said Brewer, 62. "It sounds crazy."

He set out at 10:15 a.m., flanked by roughly 150 eighth-graders from Exploris Middle School. It wasn't a field day. About 50 of the kids pledged to run 30 miles and raise $30 in October -- money that will help bring clean water to three elementary schools in Tanzania.

"It's our teacher's birthday, and that's what he wanted," said eighth-grader Alexandra van Dorsten.

"So this is two birds with one stone," echoed Sophia Baneth, her classmate.

Water has dominated class discussions at Exploris for the past eight weeks.

"We had to make a drawing of a whole water system," said Hasmin Gale, an eighth-grader. "Where it comes from, where it goes ... ."

As part of their class, they learned that more than a billion people worldwide either drink unsafe water or travel long distances on foot to find safe supplies.

Their teacher, Frank McKay, wanted them to hear more than grim statistics. So the school contacted Brewer, a retiree from Raleigh who ran 15,000 miles last year.

That 95-day globe-circling trip included 20 other members sponsored by the Blue Planet Run Foundation, a nonprofit trying to bring clean water to 200 million people by 2027.

But locally, Blue Planet asks runners to make a 30-mile, $30 pledge.

That money, according to Blue Planet's Web site, goes to help three remote African schools build closed wells with hand pumps.

In Raleigh, Brewer finished the first 36 laps by 1 p.m. As the day wore on, his back grew more bent. At 3:15 p.m., he rounded lap 82 and declared himself finished at just over 27 miles.

"I don't want to injure myself," he said, taking a big drink.