New London ― Eight international runners raising money for children across the globe made a stop in the city on Thursday where they were feted with cheers, ringing cowbells and waving flags by fellow Lions Club members.

By the time the group jogged down Bank Street and into Parade Plaza, the athletes had completed four-fifths of a 484-mile, Washington, D.C., to Boston trek set to end Friday at the Lions Clubs International convention.

The Lions Charity Run, now in its 11th year, has raised more than $350,000 toward a variety of projects, from hospital remodeling in Poland and Morocco to shelter building in Syria and Ukraine.

The octet of runners, hailing from Germany, Poland, Canada and Ukraine, spent the last four days trotting through sections of Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York before arriving in the city.

“It’s always 90 degrees,” said Mariusz Szeib, one of the four German participants.

As in past years, the pledges donated for the 2023 run will be split between U.S. and international children’s charities.

Half of the money raised by this year’s run will help rebuild a Ukrainian school destroyed by Russian missiles, said Roman Monastyrskyy, a 61-year-old resident of Lviv, Ukraine, which the runner described as a considerable distance from the main fighting.

“This run is to promote friendship across nations,” he said, describing the streams of Ukrainian refugees seeking sanctuary from the fighting in Poland and other friendly countries.

Just hours before the runners arrived in the city, the Associated Press reported at least six people in Lviv were killed Thursday after Russian cruise missiles struck an apartment building in the western Ukraine city.

The other half of the donations will be used to help young victims of natural disasters in the United States.

Szeib, one of the group’s four German participants, said the runners don’t run a straight course, but take turns putting in a requisite number of miles over the course of a day. A van is used to ferry runners through sections of the trail.

“It’s about arithmetic, not geography,” he said.

About 30 Lions Club members from several Connecticut branches were on hand to greet their perspiring guests, many gripping American and Ukrainian flags. Joanne Davis, president of the Waterford Regional Lions Club, called the sight of the yellow-clad runners “inspiring.”

“What they’re doing, how they’re doing it, it’s humbling to me,” she said.

Susan Fisher, the district governor for the Lions Club International Eastern Connecticut branches, said the runners were set to spend the night in Mystic before hitting the road again early Friday to begin the last leg of the run into Boston.

Fisher said each year’s run raises approximately $35,000.

“That’s not chump change,” she said.

Before heading to dinner, the runners posed for pictures, offered a gift box to Mayor Michael Passero and led the crowd in a chant of “We run, we serve.”

Szeib said even seasoned participants can hit an emotional wall after days of inclement weather and sore feet. He recalled the 2017 charity run from Alabama to Chicago in which torrential rain led to some brief consideration of stopping the event.

“But we decided we weren’t made of sugar and we overcame,” he said.

j.penney@theday