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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

8,000 PLUS RUNNERS COMPLETE INAUGURAL CHARITY RACE: PROOF THAT HEALTHY LIVING AND COMPASSION ARE STILL ALIVE IN AMERICA


It took us the better part of three hours to run a half marathon on Sunday (that my GPS clocked out at 14.4 miles, thank you very much). I don’t expect to be the front cover of the sports section. I didn’t expect the headline “EJG and JSG Complete Third Half Marathon.” We ran for our health, and for the benefit of a very worthy charity, with no expectations of glory. But our lousy local paper barely made mention of the inaugural national marathon to fight breast cancer, a race that attracted over 8,000 runners from all 50 states and dozens of countries around the world. Sure, the little story they buried in the middle of Monday’s sports section mentioned some winning African natives and a big-time Olympian who happened to win the thing for the women. But covering only the winners doesn’t tell a fraction of the story.
There were more than 8,000 of us out there. 8,000. There were moms and grandmas. There were breast cancer survivors, and there were those, who like me, ran to honor survivors (my mom). Some ran for their future daughters and nieces. We ran with teachers, Starbucks baristas, physicians, and Publix cashiers, all grinding away at the pavement on a Sunday morning. Running instead of sleeping, or instead of bellying up to the biggest breakfast buffet offering. When Americans are slovenly, apathetic, and obese we get great media. How many stories are there on the expanding waistline? Bad news sells the news, and a charitable act that simultaneously benefits the giver may not be spicy enough for advertising sales. So I wrote my own headline today.

5 comments:

EJG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
EJG said...

Ditto... and thanks for skewering the Times-Union. I forgot to do that in my post.

P.S.: OMG!!! I just googled "Skewering" to make sure I spelled it correctly. The first web site it brought up was for "Testicle Skewering". I'm still in pain just thinking about what I saw!

Cora Spondence said...

Your nature and writing show your overwhelming generosity. You describe the diversity of the runners and the energies of their efforts with such pride and affection. It's a pleasure to read, as always.

DiaBelo said...

I like how you end with "So I wrote my own headline today." It's like being actor AND director.

MJ said...

First Coast News carried quite a bit of feel good coverage.
Honestly, I expected to see more pink but it seems the race raked in tons of green so it was all good.