From left, Rebecca Eddy, Kenzie Miller, Jovia Manzie, Joe Melillo, Michelle Johannsen and Alex Marion took a morning run in Lawrence on Thursday. They are members of a group of 25 people who are running from San Francisco to Baltimore to raise money for young adults with cancer as part of the 4K for Cancer. They arrived in Lawrence on Wednesday evening, staying at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1011 Vermont St., and planned to continue their cross-country trek Friday morning.

The 25 runners traveling from San Francisco to Baltimore were glad to arrive in Kansas earlier this month. The rolling hills were a breeze following their run through the Rocky Mountains. After traversing the Mojave Desert, the tree cover in the Sunflower State made it feel like they were in a rainforest, one runner said. Kansas has been quite humid, though, they noted.

The runners, who are raising money for young adults with cancer as part of the 4K for Cancer, arrived in Lawrence on Wednesday evening, planning to spend a rest day here Thursday and depart Friday morning. They stayed at Trinity Episcopal Church, which has previously hosted 4K for Cancer bike-riding teams.

“We are traveling across the country to promote the message of the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults and hopefully change the lives of the people we come in contact with along the way,” said Alex Marion, a 20-year-old runner from Baltimore. “I think all of us believe in the slogan of 4K for Cancer, which is ‘Run. Inspire. Unite.’ Hopefully people will see this and be able to push themselves through cancer treatment.”

The runners, who range in age from 18 to 23, left San Francisco on June 15 and plan to arrive in Baltimore on July 26. They run 10 to 15 miles a day, taking turns driving each of the five vans that accompany them, before stopping overnight in a town along the way. Their food and shelter are all donated, allowing them to give the majority of the money they raise to the cancer charity. Each runner has to raise a minimum of $4,500; the group’s total for this trip was $143,000.

Every three or four days, they rest in a town for 24 hours, often doing community service projects like awarding scholarships to cancer survivors or providing care bags to chemotherapy patients. Most, if not all, of the runners have a personal connection to cancer; for instance, runner Matt Dexter lost his mom to the disease in 2008.

“I was only 13 and didn’t really know what was going on,” said Dexter, of Acton, Mass. “And I just knew my mom was a really nice person, really outgoing, big into community service. That’s why I like this organization: because I can honor her and all the stuff she did.”

The runners say no day on the road goes exactly as planned: They have had a van get stuck in mud and come close to falling off a mountain. The trip also allows them to experience new things: A couple of the girls — one is from Washington, the other Alaska — saw fireflies for the first time Wednesday night in Lawrence; another runner, from California, had his first encounter with snow — on July 3, in the Rocky Mountains.

“This city’s beautiful,” Marion said of Lawrence. “A lot of us had never been to Kansas before and didn’t really know what to expect from Lawrence. It’s been a really amazing surprise, actually.”

The 4K for Cancer is in its 13th year, but 2013 marked the first time it included a team of runners. It also has four bike-riding teams, traveling from Baltimore to Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and San Diego. The Ulman Cancer Fund, which was started in 1997 by a young cancer survivor, provides financial support to 14- to 39-year-olds fighting cancer, along with their families.

“What I really like about the Ulman Cancer Fund is that the money raise doesn’t go toward research but to people going through the daily struggles of cancer,” said Kenzie Miller, 23, of Issaquah, Wash. “It’s just really cool to see how that money can make a difference in individuals’ lives.”

Added Marion: “There’s a lot of support for young people with cancer and older people with cancer, but the middle group tends to get left out. That’s what the Ulman Fund’s mission is: to provide support for those people.”