AVON, Colorado — Markus Mueller always wanted a runner's-eye view of America.

This summer he'll get it.

Mueller will run the Footrace Across America. It's 3,200 miles in 70 days, from Los Angeles to New York.

He'll tell you all about that and similar adventures Thursday evening during a presentation and slide show in the Avon library.

Mueller has run for more than 25 years. He says that with all that time to think about why he does stuff like this, he could actually explain it.

“It's kind of difficult to explain, but it's always something I wanted to do,” he says.

This isn't his first transcontinental trek.

He did a six-day race in New York last summer. The Leadville 100 is a jaunt for people like Mueller.

His run across Australia was 2,700 miles. It was shorter than the Footrace Across America because Australia is shorter.

Then again, a couple hundred miles don't make much difference when you're crossing continents, Mueller said.

There are lots of similarities in all these races. For example …

“You have to get up and run every day. You can come up with thousands of excuses not to do it. But if you start that, you're finished,” Mueller said.

Also, Arizona and New Mexico look an awful lot like Middle-Of-Nowhere Australia.

The Footrace Across America starts in Los Angeles and they head out across the desert. In June. When it's hot and windy, giving runners the sensation of what it's like to be a piece of meat on a convection oven.

“The real running part is probably 30 percent. The rest is mental,” Mueller said. “The main thing is stay healthy. If you don't do that, you don't have a chance in the first place.”

Markus is 47 this summer, the perfect age for this sort of thing.

“Usually people are between 40 and 50 doing this. You need lots of running experience, you have to know your body, when to slow down, to always treat small problems straightaway. Small problems will become big problems,” he said.

He'll take a dozen pairs of shoes with him. He'll need them.

Runners will cover between 45 and 58 miles in a day. A normal stage takes 8-10 hours; a long one is 14-15 hours.

There are lots of great charities and Mueller says he supports several. But this isn't for them, it's for him.

“This is a personal dream I have has since 1986,” he said.