There are a lot of differences between the UK’s cancer research fundraiser Race for Life, and the US cancer research fundraiser Relay for Life. Relay for Life is based on time, and you’re generally sponsored a certain amount for a time or a distance walked. Race for Life is a 5K (although some places have 10K events as well), and most of my sponsorship came straight in, not contingent on anything else. Relay for Life is also open to anyone – my family usually does it as a team event, and trade off shifts to walk. Race for Life is a women-only fundraiser, which I find both awesome and disturbingly sexist.
I participated in Race for Life in Nottingham this last weekend. My fundraising page is still up for a few weeks, if you want to donate. (www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/rachelandkendra) My friend Rachel pulled in a couple of her other friends, and together we were Team Pink.
Race for Life is a very pink thing. Pink has become the traditional colour for breast cancer support, and because it’s women-only, there was an awful lot of pink around. We helped contribute to the pink atmosphere by wearing pink wigs, pink headbands with either pink mouse ears or pink devil horns on them, pink shirts, pink leg warmers, pink face paint, pink grease paint on our arms, and pink spray-on glitter (which you couldn’t really see, but we knew it was there). It was so very pink, and we weren’t even the most pink team on the track.
I’d had big plans, when Rachel and I signed up in January, to actually get into the habit of running and be able to run the 5K without stopping. That didn’t happen. I started training pretty well – more consistently when it started getting warmer – but my ankles started hurting, and I lost my ankle supports, so I stopped until I could get more. Then, the week before the race, I did something to my foot – possibly exacerbated by the too-small shoes I accidentally wore one day – that made it very painful to walk. It’s something that’s happened before, and I still don’t know what it is other than “painful”. So when the race came around, I didn’t run more than about five minutes at a stretch (although, for whatever reason, running was actually easier on my foot than walking. But still – ouch). My goal is to be able to run 5K by next year’s race, whether I participate or not. This does, of course, depend on my feet not being stupid and injury-prone, however.
Our team name got a slight alteration when the day of the race came. It started raining Saturday night, with proper thunder and lightning and everything else that makes me slightly homesick for the Midwest. Sunday morning, it poured (and there were a few cracks of lightning). It rained, and rained, and rained. The sheets of water that came up from the bus I was on to get to the race went almost as high as the bus itself. The sweatshirt I was wearing was drenched by the time I got to the place where we were getting ready. My socks stayed wet until I got home several hours later and peeled them off. Given all the rain, we renamed ourselves Team Pink Drowned Rats.
But the rain stopped about an hour before the race started, and by the time we were actually going, it was bright, warm, and incredibly humid. I think by the end our faces were just as pink as our wigs.
It was interesting that we were one of the tamer groups racing. There were quite a lot of wigs – pink or otherwise. There were babies in pushchairs, puppies wearing pink boas and Race for Life signs, printed T-shirts with pictures and race numbers on them. But the best were the costumes. Three rabbits with “Durawell” batteries, and, the best thing, SpongeBob and Patrick. I was warm enough in jogging trousers and a T-shirt; I can’t even imagine how hot it got inside a giant SpongeBob.
About 5000 people participated, they said. Plenty of people ran, even more walked. There was an aerobic warmup at the beginning, including a performance by the Nivea Boys (Nivea is a sponsor of Race for Life) where they sang and danced to one of the cheesiest songs that was out when I lived in England as an undergrad. (DON’T STOP MOVING!!!! WOOOO S CLUB 7!!!!) I laughed hysterically for about thirty seconds, and then started dancing along. Because you have to, when you hear a song that brings up those kinds of memories.
At the end, everyone got a medal and a carrier bag with stuff – a breakfast bar, a bottle of water, some Nivea products, and entries to various contests. I haven’t really looked through it in depth yet. After the race, I went home with my wonderful housemates who’d come to support me, and we all just collapsed on the couch and watched movies for the rest of the day. But the reason that they were also exhausted is another story…..
I’m glad I participated in Race for Life. I wish things had gone differently: I wish I hadn’t hurt my foot, I wish I could have run the whole 5K, I wish I had been more active (and potentially annoying) about raising money. But every little bit counts, and I’m glad to be the European branch of my family’s cancer research fundraising.
