Updated 11 a.m. June 4: Scott Yates completed his run from the Sacramento campus HR office to the Davis campus HR office in 3:34 this morning. "Kinda slow," he said. "I don’t normally take pictures, reply to texts and post to Facebook and Twitter when I run!" He also took a 1.5-mile detour to the "Good Day Sacramento" studio in West Sacramento for an appearance on morning TV. He emailed Dateline UC Davis at about 10:30 a.m.: "I made it. Been at the office for about 45 minutes. ... Now I’m hungry."

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By Dateline staff

He isn’t doing it because of Fix 50 (although he’ll beat the traffic, for sure). He isn’t doing it simply for the exercise (although he’ll get plenty). And he isn’t in a marathon (he’d have to go 6.2 miles more).

Scott Yates of Human Resources is running 20 miles from the Sacramento campus HR office to the Davis campus HR office to show how they are closer together than people may realize and connected under the new banner “One HR Community,” inspired by One UC Davis.

“And I’ll be running for the fun of it,” Yates told Dateline UC Davis.

He’s also selected a special day for his run: tomorrow, June 4, National Running Day.

Yates, a project and communications manager in central HR, said he will start his run at the Ticon III Building (home of HR on the Sacramento campus) at 5 a.m. “I expect to be showered and checking email at my desk (in the HR Administration Building) by 9 a.m.,” he wrote in an article for the HR newsletter.

He invites people to follow him on Twitter, @Runfucius1, for updates and photos during his run.

Run, walk, bike, swim ... do whatever it takes to "move more" in the UC Living Well Move More Challenge.

National Running Day, launched in 2009 and held the first Wednesday in June, is “a day when runners everywhere declare their passion for running” and hopefully inspire others to run.

This isn’t Yates’ first time going long distance to inspire others. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he joined his father, brother and sister on a bike ride from California to Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 went down in a field; and on to ground zero, the World Trade Center site, in New York City. The family did the ride as a benefit for the Twin Towers Orphan Fund, raising $10,000.

His dad’s passion for cycling is partly the reason his son became an ultrarunner.

He began the conversion in 2012, around the time his first-born child learned to walk and his injured father learned to walk again, after being partially paralyzed in a crash on his bicycle. While recovering, Frank Yates said to his son Scott: “I nearly worked myself to death. I wish I had made more time to ride my bike. I like riding my bike. Make sure you find time to do what you want to do.”

Subsequently, “with my work stress escalating and my dad’s words still fresh in my ears, I decided I would become a runner,” Yates wrote in a post on The Running Stories blog in May 2013.

“Not just train for and run a marathon like I’d done twice before, but actually become a runner. As I had always associated my dad with the sport of cycling, I decided to position myself as a runner in the eyes of my son.” (If he were writing this blog post today, he’d say “sons,” after he and his wife welcomed their second son in January.)

On May 3, he ran his first 100K (62 miles), and he’s signed up for a 100-mile run in November.

“My answer to the question, ‘Why do you run,’ is simple: I run because I want to.”

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