Coralville man comes to Decorah Wednesday as part of his goal to run in all 99 Iowa counties

Coralville resident Rik Zortman has a goal of running in all 99 Iowa counties.  But it's not the running which makes him stand out--it's the routes he runs in those counties.

Zortman always races so that his path spells out the name of a person--often the name of a child who has died from cancer, but other names as well.  He says he hopes the positive words he spells out by running will help people.

Zortman began running this way three years ago.  He was soon joined by other people and began getting requests from throughout the country.

Running a route which spells out a name or a word "takes serious planning," Zortman tells decorahnews.com.  He looks for a city whose streets are in a grid, then spells out the name or word and plots them onto the grid.

He had originally planned to run in Winneshiek County in early May, but encountered heavy rains then.  He returned to Decorah on Wednesday and ran a route of more than six miles which spelled out the word "Imagine" and the name "Preston."  Since he started running this way, his routes have spelled out more than 1,000 words and names.

Now that he has run a route in Decorah, Zortman has 30 counties to go.  He plans to run in more than a dozen northernmost counties later this month and then finish off the remaining 10 to 15 other counties later in the summer.

All of this is in memory of his son, Armstrong, who loved to run around.  Zortman didn't have any running experience, but he began running in memory of his son.  Now his running reaches out to other families whose children have died in an attempt to be a positive memory in the lives of their families.