RIFLE - Victor Lara Ricco gave a short speech, took the baton from Melissa Moon and raised it in the air before turning and heading east on Highway 6, bound for Silt.

So passed another exchange point - Rifle's raw water pump station, to be precise - for the Blue Planet Run crew, one of more than 1,500 on their 15,200-mile quest to spread the word about unsafe drinking water and the havoc it wreaks across the globe. And to raise a little money for global water projects.

Lara Ricco and Moon are two of 20 runners who have already combined to log more than 12,000 miles in the globe-circling quest, which began in New York City on June 1 and then routed through Boston, Ireland, England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Russia, Mongolia, China and Japan before picking up again in San Francisco for a cross-country trip across the United States. The epic journey wraps up back in New York City on Sept. 4.

Each runner, picked from a pool of applicants in the hundreds, covers 10-miles before passing off the baton. Each runner puts in 10 miles a day and gets every fifth day off.

Talk about tiring.

"Phew," said an exhausted Moon, who hails from New Zealand. "It's really like run, sleep, eat and then off to the next destination."

A fleet of vehicles - vans, motorcycles, an SUV and a smart car - transport runners and legions of Blue Planet Run workers.

Millie Daniels, one of those workers, is among those transporting and looking after the runners. A coach of elite distance runners in Bedford, Va., Daniels looks after the runners' nourishment and entertainment needs.

"Every day, we're icing them up and getting them sport drinks," she said. "We're making sure they're getting refueled. The driver's job is to keep their temperament up. A happy runner runs longer."

Though runners don't get to take in all the sites they'd like, diversions do work their way into the trip. Richard Johnson, a musician from Atlanta and member of the Blue Planet Run team, likes to take in a movie when possible.

"We hang out, talk, listen to music, talk about what we're going to do after (the run)," he said. "Me and Victor went to a movie the other night in Moab (Utah). That's my thing."

Moon talked about taking in the Great Wall of China and the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. But rating above it all, the international competitor contended, is the sense of accomplishment in circling the globe to fight the safe water battle.

"Our last week in Russia, I was running along one of their busiest highways with Russian police cars behind me and people driving by were honking and giving thumbs up," she recalled. "That made it real to me for the first time."

As an internationally competing runner, Moon has seen firsthand how devastating the unsafe drinking water epidemic can be.

"I've seen it," she said. "I travel to competitions twice a year. As an athlete, you're always weary of what you're drinking. I'd never really been to third-world countries and seen it affecting whole communities."

Jin Zidell, founder and chairman of the Blue Planet Run, has traveled the world enough to know the nasty footprint left by the safe water issue.

"I'm 69 and I can look back in the last 50 years and this world has become much more fractured and frightening," he said by phone last week. "We, the global we, need a win. We can win the safe drinking water issue, with no technological barrier, no power barrier. There's not anybody who doesn't think safe drinking water is not a good idea."

Some one-fifth of the world's population does not have daily, immediate access to safe drinking waters, the Blue Planet Run Web site states. Some 6,000 people die every 24 hours from health-related problems caused by unsafe drinking water and roughly 5,000 are kids.

It took six years for Zidell to take the Run from concept to reality and it will resurface every two years with different routes.

Rifle Mayor Keith Lambert, on hand at the Rifle exchange, couldn't deliver enough kudos for what Zidell and the seemingly bottomless pool of workers are doing.

"The money raised is a good thing," Lambert said, "but raising awareness and the education factor in sending the message around the world how important this problem is is the amazing part."