Bill Michl
Okay, Bill Michl isn’t a real lion, not the kind that prowls the African savanna, anyway. Bill belongs to the Fort Frances Lions Club in Fort Frances, Ontario, and after a one year break, he is completing his trip by foot around Lake Superior to raise funds for the Lions International Fund.
I caught up with Bill in the Grand Marais recreation park last week. He was in his Winnebago, fresh off a long run he had completed earlier in the day.
Bill started his Lake Superior run from Thunder Bay on July 8, 2017, averaging 15 miles per day, but when he reached Grand Marais, Michigan, he was in a lot of pain and had to go to the doctor to find out what was wrong.
Turns out he was suffering from sciatica nerve damage caused by two denigrated disks in his back.
“I was favoring one side when I was running, and that caused an imbalance. And that led to the sciatica nerve being damaged,” he said.
“I took a few days off in Grand Marais, Mich. and tried to recover enough to run into Marquette because the Lions Club there was having its 100th anniversary and they wanted to throw a little party celebrating my run. I had to drive to the party because I simply couldn’t run. I couldn’t go more than two miles, so I had to quit. I took 2018 off to recuperate and heal. During that time, I learned how to stretch and how to do core exercises to prevent sciatica. Once I recovered, I thought it was time to complete what I had started out to do.”
While the run is going well, Bill said, “The fundraising has been going a bit slower than I expected. My motto is ‘One step, One dollar, for LCIF.’”
At 1,234 miles, the distance around Lake Superior, Bill figured he would take about 2,100,000 steps. That would have been a lot of money for LCIF, but he’s nowhere close to raising that kind of dough. Still, he said, “Any donation will help.”
Running was the last thing Bill was interested in in high school. “My wrestling coach made us do three-mile runs, and I just hated that. I couldn’t stand running, period. And I never understood why we would be wasting time running when we could be on the mat beating somebody up,” he said with a laugh as he recounted his busy high school days complete with chores and sports while growing up on a farm near Fort Frances.
One day Bill was called into the principal’s office, and the principal made an unusual request.
“He asked me if I would beat up his son, who had been smarting off. He figured his son needed to be set straight. He told his son if he could beat up the smallest guy on the wrestling team, he could act any way he wanted. I was the smallest guy on the team, so it was arranged that he would wrestle me. I picked him up and slammed him down over and over again. Didn’t try to hurt him, but beating up the principal’s son, with the principal’s permission, do you suppose anyone else has ever been asked to do that before?”
So far, Bill has received a lot of help from fellow Lions as he made his way around Gitchee Gummi. He has tried to average about 15 miles per day give or take a few miles here or there, depending on the weather.
He doesn’t try to take many days off but this spring, when he was going through Poplar, Wisconsin, the area was hit with a snowstorm. “I decided it was too dangerous to run alongside the road in those conditions. It was wet, sloppy, slippery, just not a good day to run.”
If Bill can’t find anyone to assist him, his runs become somewhat of a juggling match. At the end of his 15 miles, he would mark the spot and get a ride back to his vehicle.
If he couldn’t get a ride, he would drive the distance he wanted to cover for that day, stash his bicycle, and then drive back, park, do the run, and then bike back to his Winnebago. It’s a lot of rigmarole, but as Bill noted, at age 64, he has a lot of energy, and he added, “I like to stay busy.”
In Grand Marais, Minn. Bill ran 9 miles and received a ride back to his Winnebago from Millie Spry, who is a Lion. He will finish his 1,100-mile journey in Thunder Bay, where it began on June 9, if all goes right.
“The run’s shorter because I shaved about 200 miles off when I started again, taking the cutoff in upper Michigan,” he said, noting the expense of the trip was cutting into his budget.
A retired heavy equipment operator, Bill started running at age 48 when his wife left him. The kids were out of the house, and he needed something to do with his free time. So far he has run about 17 marathons and completed a triathlon that had a 2.2-mile swim, 110-mile bike ride and ended with a 26.2-mile marathon. “I spent the winter learning how to swim. You have to finish the swim in 2 ½ hours, or they pull you from the race. I finished it in 2:10 and I had to have help getting my wetsuit off. I completed the race in about 15 hours. It was a long day.”
So far, Bill has spent about $5,000 of his money to fund his run. He hopes to pick up more donations dedicated to the Lions International Fund.
“Local Lions Clubs participate in a wide variety of service projects. We have a strong commitment to community hearing, eyeglass recycling, give scholarships to high school students, fund Lions leader dogs, and Lions service dogs, help the handicapped, give aid where it is needed if we can, and the Lions International Fund backs those projects and helps local clubs. Plus, 100 percent of the money donated to Lions International goes back into communities,” he said.
The Lions motto is “We serve.”
Bill is doing that, one step at a time.
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