I just found out who the guest speaker/guest of honor will be at my favorite race next year. The Fools Five Road Race is a 5-mile race, put on by a town of fewer than a thousand people, that has raised nearly $2 million in the last 35 years for local cancer research and support. Each year, they bring in an athlete and cancer survivor/patient to speak.

Remember reading last summer about a guy with brain cancer who won a marathon in Texas while pushing his daughter in a stroller? He ran a 3:07.

He's going to be at this race in April. If anyone on here is in southern Minnesota, western Wisconsin, northern Iowa, etc., and wants to attend an event that will change your perspective, this is the one to attend. www.foolsfive.org

“A man racing against time” best describes Iram J. Leon, a 32-year-old runner from Austin, Texas.  On Nov. 5, 2010, Iram had the first of many seizures during a lunch break while he was working s a probation officer for juveniles.  The diagnosis was Grade 2 diffuse astrocytoma in the left temporal lobe, a relentless and intrusive form of brain cancer that carries a survival period from four to eight years.

Leon was still in the hospital in late 2010 when—stunned by news of his terminal diagnosis—he felt the need to run.  ”A friend came by and ran with me around the hospital—against doctors’ advice,” recalled Leon.  “Running is my therapy.” – He said “It beats sitting down with a therapist.”

He has run the Boston Marathon, and in March of 2013 he won the Gusher Marathon in Austin, Texas, while pushing his 6-year-old daughter Kiana in a stroller, with a time of 3 hours 7 minutes and 35 seconds, just one second off his personal record, all while managing terminal brain cancer.

“People shouldn’t wait to live until they’re told they’re dying,” Leon said.  ”Go home and hug somebody and don’t wait to be told you have a disease that’s going to kill you.  I ran my entire life, and I was dumb enough to wait until I was told I was dying before I ran with my daughter.”

It just goes to show how large of a state MN is. It would take me 5 hrs and 15 minutes from the FM area to get to Lewiston.

I know - I live just across the border in Wisconsin, and driving to Fargo in May took a little over 6 hours.

If this race were a marathon, or even a half, I would tell you it is absolutely worth the drive. Check their web page - that picture at the top is of all the participants and spectators taking a knee, while cancer survivors remain standing. It is that kind of atmosphere that makes the event so special.

 

It looks interesting but it will take some special circumstances to go somewhere so far. DD is 18 months and we have another one on the way. Unfortunately our small one and cars don't work very well.

Been there. My family all live in Nebraska - about 14 hours of drive time. It was just this year, when DS was 7, that the drive became fairly pleasant.

About 3 years ago, the speaker was a man named Win Apel (I think). He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer on 9/11/2001, and when he was given the all clear 3 months later, decided he could do a marathon in every state and on every continent in the next 10 years. He had finished it up with a charity entry in the Boston Marathon the year before he spoke at the event.

The speaker is always after the race, while people are waiting around for awards. I had a rotten race that day, didn't expect to get any award, but stuck around anyway feeling sorry for myself and listening to him speak. He talked about running all those marathons, and that after he did it, he was looking for the next goal. Maybe climbing the highest mountains? Something.

Then he made me almost cry for how stupid I was to be whining about my tough race.

Because just 6 months after having completed his 50 states/7continents goal, he was diagnosed with an inoperable, uncurable brain cancer. He was given roughly 14 months to live. And he was standing up there telling us this without a hint of self-pity. Talking about how maybe someday, through the efforts of researchers like those this race supports, his type of cancer WILL be curable. He was positive. And living life without feeling badly for himself.

His prognosis was nearly exact, because the race organizers reported that he died the next November, 14 months after his diagnosis.

It is the stories like that, the huge family groups all walking and running in matching shirts in memory or in honor of a cancer patient, that makes this event so special to me.