My sister was the one that issued the challenge.

After announcing on Twitter that she and my mom had signed up for the Sun Run, the trash talk began. It didn’t take long for my brother and I to respond to the taunting, and then I upped the stakes. So presently, four members of my immediate family are prepping to run the Sun Run on May 3rd. And since I am confident that I will cross the line ahead of my sister, the challenge isn’t an athletic one at all.

Now while we force ourselves to train (in the case of Wes and I, at least) for the race and try to get fit enough that we save face with our times over the 10 km, we are racing to see who raises the most money for charity as well. The Sun Run is not a charity event per se, but the Behan Family is making it one, in our own way. Each of us is selecting our own charity, and raising funds in our own way for that cause.

I have decided to raise funds for the BC Cancer Foundation. It is the fight against cancer that is my real motivation, and not just the sibling rivalry, I assure you. Normally I default to supporting a children’s charity, but cancer seems determined to become a most loathed adversary, indeed. My Grandfathers have both had cancer scares (their lives saved by surgery) and my Grandmother succumbed to Leukemia a few years ago. My friend Derek has battled cancer publicly; an awareness campaign that has affected me several times with his candid disclosures. And recently, my uncle (still a young man) received the dreaded diagnosis- malignant. I’m sure you don’t have to think very hard to recall a family member, friend or co-worker whose life has been affected as well. So ask you to join me in fighting this most heinous disease.

I’ve set up a page where people can donate to the BC Cancer Foundation directly and help me reach my fund raising goal.

As many people know, my sister and I ran a marathon two years ago, and blogged about our adventures. During our training, I started using some cool online tools to help track our progress, including MapMyRun. Back then, we were trying to invent new 15 and 17 mile training runs. Now it is a mere 10k, and I’m content to just circle the park near my house:

That’s enough talk. Time to get to training. And time for you to make a donation. Nothing would be better motivation for me than that.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.