Since late March, Glen Ellyn native Katie Visco has been making her way across the country on foot — on running shoes, more specifically.

Putting about 20 miles of road behind her on most days, she is hoping to make it to San Diego by December, becoming the youngest female runner ever to set out on a nationwide run.

But the record is not all that important to 24-year-old Visco. As she sees it, the accomplishment is in the journey itself.

She is powered by positive energy and raw determination, Visco said, and she hopes to inspire others to likewise pursue the outlandish goals in their lives.

“It’s running. It’s doing something big in the world that helps. And the sense of adventure,” she said. “I hope that that can been seen by other people. This run is a little bit of a metaphor to achieve your dreams. Be an entrepreneur in your own life.”

As Visco prepares to arrive in Glen Ellyn this weekend before continuing westward, those who know her said the trek is only fitting for the lifelong lover of running and people.

“She’s always been an optimist,” said her father, James Visco. “She’s always believed in the far out.”

Katie Visco set out on a cold and cloudy March 29 from Boston, where she had been working for a year in an AmeriCorps volunteer program. Now her home address is a van — driven by a college friend and carrying water, food and supplies — that drives a bit farther down the road each time she runs past it.

Each day on the road Katie Visco logs between 18 and 21 miles.

“I’ll start in the morning, and I’ll do most of the miles in the morning. In the afternoon (I will) finish up with four or six miles,” she said earlier this week from a roadside near LaPorte, Ind.

The long miles burn a tremendous amount of energy, and Visco is taking in 3,500 calories a day in bananas, milk and cereal, peanut butter and energy bars.

“It is possible to eat healthy even when you’re eating that much,” she said.

She rests as needed, usually taking a break every several days. Along the way she also is stopping to speak for Girls on the Run, a nonprofit organization aimed at increasing girls’ self-esteem through running.

She has stayed in the van and in hotels, but most nights she stays with members of local running clubs or other hosts, many of whom also join her on her runs.

“It’s really neat because about 80 percent of the time, there are people who come out to run with me.”

The company on the road keeps her going more than anything else, she said.

“There are so many people to meet along the way,” Katie Visco said. “That’s what fueled me and the people and their stories and what this means to them.”

On Sunday, June 28, she wants area runners to join her in Oak Park in the morning and in Lombard in the afternoon before she arrives at 3 p.m. at her Cranston Court home, where her family is setting up finish line and inviting spectators. [See the meet up schedule below]

“The third event is for folks like me who aren’t going to run,” James Visco said. “We’re hoping to do a chute on Cranston Court, where it’s … 150 yards of street where we can just cheer her home.”

Katie Visco started running to train for soccer when she was a student at Hadley Junior High School. She fell in love with it, she said. She ran competitively at Glenbard West High School and at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

“She was a kid who led not always with the top times but certainly with the top attitude,” said Paul Hass, coach of the girls cross country team at Glenbard West. “That’s why we chose her as captain, because she just had a great attitude to motivate.”

Eleven female runners have made the across-the-country trip, said John Wallace III, who completed his own run in 2005. He now runs a Web site, www.seejohnrun.com, that tracks others’ nationwide runs. He has compiled information on 220 crossings by 193 people, starting with the first in 1909.

Visco is the youngest female to start a trip, but when she finishes she will be slightly older than another 24-year-old female runner who finished in 2008, Wallace said.

As Visco crosses into Illinois this week, the ninth state out of 15, she has been able to take in more of the country than would be possible on a typical road trip. Moving up to just several miles per hour and with little else to do but talk and think, she said she has come to appreciate the minutiae.

“Even just the colors of the wheat on the side of the road,” she said. “Everything, all the little things count. Being able to see those things and process why they’re there, …. it really paints a picture.”

After close to three months on the road, Visco is unfazed by the journey so far — to a Zen-like degree, almost. She was at a loss to name any unexpected difficulties, even after 1,000 miles through springtime New England and the Appalachian Mountains.

Nor was she particularly worried about the months of summer heat, the vast prairie states or the Rockies — all of which lie in the 2,000 miles ahead of her.

“It’s something that happens. It’s a given,” she said, cheerfully dismissing the hardships. “In order to make it to the other coast, you have to deal with it.”

KATIE VISCO’S ARRIVAL SCHEDULE
WHAT Morning running meet up
WHEN 8 a.m. Sunday, June 28
WHERE Roosevelt Road and Harlem Avenue intersection, Oak Park
ROUTE West on Roosevelt Road to Main Street in Lombard — 11 miles total

WHAT Afternoon running meet up
WHEN 2 p.m. Sunday June 28
WHERE Enchanted Castle, 1103 S. Main St., Lombard
ROUTE North on Main Street, west on the Illinois Prairie Path, through central Glen Ellyn to Visco’s Cranston Court home at 3 p.m. — 5.5 miles total