St. Cloud Man Diagnosed With MS Running Across the State

ST. CLOUD -- A St. Cloud man is spending the month running across the state. Chad Mickelson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in July and wanted to challenge himself while he still could, so he started mapping out his run.

I didn't want anyone to say I took the shortest path across the state, so I chose a diagonal route.

Mickelson says he started down in southeastern Minnesota near La Crosse and will run about 600 miles ending up in far northwestern Minnesota near the town of Noyes.

He's got a website and is using social media to post updates on his journey.

My goal is to build awareness of what MS is, that it exists, and there's actually a lot of people that you may not even realize have MS that are dealing with it.  Especially in the Midwest, we have a pretty high prevalence of it.

Mickelson says he's averaging about 30 miles a day and he's over halfway there.

He is a physical therapist at St. Cloud Hospital.