The Terry Fox Run 2008

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I bought my Terry Fox 2008 T-shirt three days before the run. Sure, you can buy the shirts on run day itself but you know la, kiasu a bit. Apparently, last year’s run saw a turnout of 9,000 over people, so I can just imagine the last-minute T-shirt queue. But ha ha, looked like I wasn’t the only kiasu person around – by the time I got to the Canadian High Comm, there was only one shirt left! Lucky for me, it was an XXS and fit just nice.

True to kiasu tradition, my friends and I reached Taman Tasik Perdana at 7.30am this morning (still 1.5 hours until the flag-off scheduled at 9am). Car parks in TTP were already full, so we had to park over at the Tugu across the road. By the time we walked from the car to the assembly area, we’d clocked in about 1km already. My friends went to get their shirts. But since you don’t necessarily have to wear the Terry Fox shirt to run (purchase is really a donation to CARIF for cancer research), we decided to walk back to the car (+1km) to leave the shirts there and walk back (+1km) to the park. By the time we reached, we were sufficiently warmed up already!

From 8am onwards, the crowds started to thicken … it was a really good mix of people too. From older folks to young adults, kiddies to babies. Many cute little kids in their tiny Terry Fox T-shirts roller-blading, tri-cycling, cycling, being pushed around in prams, etc. So, you don’t have to run if you don’t want to or can’t. Just strap on a pair of skates or get your friends to push you around in a wheelbarrow.

At a little past 9am, Yasmin Yusoff took the stand to welcome everybody blah blah blah, and then, the run started. Finally!!

I turned on my ipod and … just as I’d expected, there were so many people that you could hardly walk, let alone run! It was a few minutes of halted half-steps, shuffling along a sea of people while making sure I didn’t step on somebody’s kid or injure somebody’s dog.

After a while, as I moved farther down the route, the crowd started to thin out a little. Ah, finally got room to run … that was when it began to be fun! So much more fun than say, doing loops around a lake and imagining you’d done six rounds when you’ve really only done four. With so many things going on, so many people running alongside you, time just whizzed by. And because the ground’s level all the way, 5 to 6 km was a breeze. Of course, the downhill parts were the funnest cos you’re zipping by with hardly any effort!

Before I knew it, the assembly area / finish line was back in sight …

… and by this time, accompanied by Mr Milo, Mr Teh Sabah and F&B tents with volunteers handing out muffins and other snacks. I was too thirsty to eat anything.

By the time we were ready to leave, it was about 10am or so … all in all, a fabulous way to spend a gorgeous Sunday morning! And for a very worthy cause.

No matter how many times I hear the Terry Fox story or see that iconic picture of him running with his prosthetic leg on the highway with the bustling traffic in the background, it never fails to move me. Come on, your heart’s gotta be made of stone to not be moved by that.

Long story short, Terry Fox – a Canadian athlete and humanitarian – was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of cancer that starts at the knees. At 18, he lost his right leg. At 21, he embarked on the Marathon of Hope – his goal was to run from coast to coast to raise $1 from each Canadian citizen for cancer research. He ran 42km every day from Newfoundland to Quebec to Ontario (that’s one full marathon every single day; most people manage about zero in their lifetimes and they don’t even have cancer). Terry had run for 143 days straight when he developed pneumonia and was forced to stop. He slipped into a coma and died in 1981. He was 22. The Terry Fox Run is, today, the largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research in the world.

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Tags: cancer research, event, exercise, fitness, health, jogging, park, perdana, running, Terry Fox, walking