I've finally got 10 minutes here to talk about the Alzheimer walk that Laura and I did over the weekend.
It was an early morning, wake up call at 0700 and I made sure I took Sarah for a nice long walk as I had to work evenings after the AM event. We had gone down to E'Claire market on the Friday before to pick up our package, but we didn't want to be rushed and we wanted to take advantage of the free breakfast! Hot chocolate, coffee, tea, oranges, bananas, cinnamon buns and juice! The walk started with Calgary's famous Peter Maher who is a part of the Alzheimer's society as his mom has Alzheimer's and he MC'd the event. Laura and I got a photo with him at the end of the race. Peter's daughter sang the national anthem and for some reason I got slightly emotional, most likely a combination of a few things. Next there was a pre stretch with an aerobics instructor who got the whole crowd involved. It was very entertaining!
The race started with the runners first, everyone in the front line were getting ready to start their stop clocks, can't wait to do it myself next year! The countdown for the race ended with Peter Maher saying 'Yeah Baby" instead of "one", it was great. The walkers were next and it was very crowded! There were plenty of walkers, of all ages, and Laura and I sped by as many as we could! We walked the 5km's in about 50minutes and it was a great day for it as well! We brought our jackets with us but had them off within 5 minutes of walking! Once we returned we were given free pizza from Papa John's, and stayed outside enjoying the warm weather and watching the runners and walkers cross the finish line. In total there were about 1000 people who raced and over $150,000 were raised, plus $30,000 donated from the Investors Group! What a great success and we were told it was the highest attendance of racers in the history of the event. Both the oldest male and female racers were in their eighties and there were prizes for the top three male and female runners. They had 50/50 tickets, and the lady who won donated the winnings back to the society, so kind of her! The day was such a great success, and I have photos but am unable to find my cord to download them to my computer. Laura and I, plus hopefully mom, will definitely be racing next year! Lets hope the weather is just as nice :)
Thank you for all who donated, I understand it is hard to support everything, but this is really close to my heart and it truly is appreciated :)
No comments:
Post a Comment