if you can take 5 minutes to watch this video i think you'll be glad you did.
today is the national Terry Fox Run day. This weekend on the Island we had a Terry Fox run and also a swim, a soccer game and a baseball game. Terry Fox is a Canadian icon and hero- for those of you who don't know who he was, here's an introduction from the Terry Fox website:
Terry Fox was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and raised in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, a community near Vancouver on Canada's west coast. An active teenager involved in many sports, Terry was only 18 years old when he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma (bone cancer) and forced to have his right leg amputated 15 centimetres (six inches) above the knee in 1977.
While in hospital, Terry was so overcome by the suffering of other cancer patients, many of them young children, that he decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research.
He would call his journey the Marathon of Hope.
It was a journey that Canadians never forgot.After 18 months and running over 5,000 kilometres (3,107 miles) to prepare, Terry started his run in St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980 with little fanfare. Although it was difficult to garner attention in the beginning, enthusiasm soon grew, and the money collected along his route began to mount. He ran 42 kilometres (26 miles) a day through Canada's Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Ontario. However, on September 1st, after 143 days and 5,373 kilometres (3,339 miles), Terry was forced to stop running outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario because cancer had appeared in his lungs. An entire nation was stunned and saddened. Terry passed away on June 28, 1981 at the age 22.
The heroic Canadian was gone, but his legacy was just beginning.
To date, more than $400 million has been raised worldwide for cancer research in Terry's name through the annual Terry Fox Run, held across Canada and around the world.
I started running for real 2 years ago for the Terry Fox run. A friend had died from cancer a week before and i wanted to do something hard- so I ran the 10K- twice as far as I had ever run previously. I got hooked on running and now i am training for my second half-marathon. I am still pretty slow, and I find running hard, but every time i think it's hard i think of Terry Fox running a marathon a day on one leg and I keep going.
Tonight as everyone else was palying krokonole i read this book by Douglas Coupland Terry: Terry Fox and His Marathon of Hope
Terry Fox is a real hero.
