Why?
Several years ago my father was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Of course, it wasn’t easy at first. As time moved on everything became second nature for him. He took everything in stride. I’m still surprised and impressed at how easily he adapted to the new diet and lifestyle that was required of him.
On June 14th, 2009 I stepped outside for the first time with the intention of running. I started out with a walk to run program and my first run was actually run for 1:00 followed by a 0:30 walk repeated 15 times. One month later I was able to run 5k straight without any walk breaks. I kept running 5k three times a week for another month before I decided to up the ante. It was about this time that I began thinking about running a marathon. I’ve read many times that you should be running for at least a year before you attempt your first marathon. With this in mind I began to search for race possibilities. Once I found the Calgary Marathon and saw that it was on May 30th, two weeks before my one year anniversary. I knew this was the one.
After finding my marathon I really felt like I should use it to raise money for a charity. The first thing that came to mind was diabetes but didn’t want to just default to it so I kept searching. I couldn’t find anything that really stood out to me and then when I went to the Calgary Marathon website and noticed that the Canadian Diabetes Association was the charity of choice for the race. I knew I had my charity.
More than 3 million Canadians have diabetes and millions more are affected by it in their day to day life. Within the next 10 years that number is expected to increase by more than 20%. Diabetes is on the rise and has been for years. As of yet there is no cure for diabetes but it is a manageable.
The great thing about the Canadian Diabetes Association is that any money raised for them stays in Canada.