Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Hot weather makes it perfect for running in my Underwear

After a little cajoling and trash talking I finally signed up for the NYGH Underwear Affair at the end of the month. It's a fundraising 10k race for cancer care and research for cancers below the waist.


It should be a really fun run. If you'd like to help me out and support my fundraising efforts (I'm trying to raise over $400 - well, actually I already have, but I'd like to keep going) feel free to do so here. Don't be shy, I'll really appreciate it. My amazing company has fantastically decided to match donations made to me or my team, so any contribution automatically gets twice the impact!

I do want to thank all of my generous contributors to date. North York General Hospital thanks you too. You guys rock!

I have to say I'm worried about the temperature and humidity. I've fallen off the wagon since the Sporting Life run and am out of condition (sigh). I've run a few times outside over the past week and boy has it been HOT. Gotta keep hydrated. Not to mention I have to rapidly get in shape to gear up for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, which is coming up pretty quick.

We'll see what happens. I was originally planning on cracking 50 minutes or even approaching my Sporting Life time, but based on my recent runs I'll be happy to come in under an hour. I have big problems with the heat!

On a tangential note, I'm interested to see how much this particular event raises, and the number of participants, relative to the Sporting Life 10k. The Underwear Affair is a MUCH smaller event with (despite organizers' best efforts I'm sure) a much lower awareness and media profile -- a lot of people I talked with when fundraising hadn't even heard of the event. They consequently seem to have taken a different approach and chosen the path of raising the bar considerably for individual fundraising. (Each runner has to raise $400!)

Will they come close to matching the $800k the Sporting Life run took in? That run is a massive event that annually disrupts the entire city for a few hours; is it even worth asking the question? You might be surprised. Last year the Underwear Affair event was for Sunnybrook Hospital, and raised $750k, with about a thousand runners. If you're going to participate in or donate to a charity event, it can be intriguing to determine how effective their fundraising efforts actually are by performing some light comparative analysis relative to other events...