The Terry Fox Run may still be six weeks away, but Liza Arnold is already working to get the word out.
Arnold, a run volunteer, has been busy encouraging people to visit the run's website, terryfoxrun.org and sign up as either a participant or a volunteer. You don't have to raise pledge money but donations are appreciated.
The event itself is set for Sept. 18 at Community Foundation Park next to the Four Seasons Pool. Registration starts at 9 a.m. and the run begins an hour later.
"They can run, walk, bike," Arnold said. "It's a five-kilometre course that goes through Fort George Park and back."
Events at area schools are set for later in the month. Once all is said and done, about 500 people in Prince George will have participated and $13,000 is raised locally each year with proceeds going to cancer research.
Everyone gets a T-shirt but cancer survivors who sign up will be given a red T-shirt this year and will become members of "Terry's Team."
"Just to promote the success of the research behind the run," Arnold said.
This year's edition will have some added meaning. Not only will participants be there in memory of the run's namesake, but also his mother, Betty, who passed away last month.
"It's another reason the run will be extra-special this year," said Arnold. "She was such an amazing advocate for the Terry Fox Foundation and what her son did."
Arnold said Betty Fox was apprehensive at first when Terry first raised the idea of running across Canada but soon became one of his biggest supporters.
There is a Prince George connection to the origins of Fox's iconic trek. A statue of Fox is now in place in Community Foundation Park at the start-finish line for the old Boston to Prince George Marathon.
In 1979, Fox participated in the 27-kilometre race as a as a test for his cross-country Marathon of Hope and came away confident enough to embark on the epic trip the following spring.
Beginning in Newfoundland, he had intended to run 7,600 kilometres from coast to coast but he had to stop just outside Thunder Bay, Ontario when his cancer appeared in his lungs, after covering 5,373 kilometres. He died 10 months later at age 22.
For more information on the Prince George event, call Arnold at 250-964-7326 or e-mail Lindsay Timmerman at [email protected].
