Celebrating the 35th anniversary of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope this spring will give the public a chance to run a mile - actually, a historic 10 miles - in the Port Coquitlam legend's shoes.
The Terry Fox Training Run on April 4 will include a 10-mile (16 km) run following the route Fox used to train for his cross-Canada trek, as well as a shorter walk/run route for people of all ages that will take participants past Fox's childhood home and around the Maple Creek middle school track, where he learned to walk and run again after losing his leg to cancer.
"The goal is to re-engage people," said Mark Pettie, a Terry Fox Foundation volunteer who is helping organize the Terry Fox Training Run. "We want people to take a step back and say, 'This guy ran a marathon every day. On one leg.'"
Pettie and Donna White, the foundation's provincial director for B.C. and Yukon, originally planned the event as a half-marathon but, in reading Fox's journals, they found his training regimen was consistently the 10-mile route from PoCo out to the Ioco townsite and back.
"So we decided to change it to run in his footsteps on his training route," White said. "Even at 10 miles, he would sometimes do it twice and three times a day.
"He put in as many training miles as he did in his Marathon of Hope."
The date of the event - April 4 - is also significant, White said, since it could well have been Fox's last training run in 1980 before he boarded a plane for Newfoundland on April 7.
White and Pettie are still working out many of the event details but expect the 10-mile run will likely begin at 7:30 a.m. at Westwood elementary school, with the community event at 10 a.m. The exact routes for both events will be finalized shortly, with maps and event information going online likely in a couple of weeks.
Also in the works are permanent signs that will be placed along the way to mark Terry's Training Route. Some of the signs will include facts and trivia about Fox, as well as some inspirational quotes like, "I'm not a dreamer, and I'm not saying this will initiate any kind of definitive answer or cure to cancer, but I believe in miracles. I have to."
"It's so people know where Terry went out and trained, and so they can find some inspiration when they're running on their own," White said. "We want to bring people out to the area to have a chance to run in Terry's footsteps."
The Terry Fox Foundation is welcoming people to volunteer for the event as well. For details, contact the BC/Yukon office at 604-464-2666 or [email protected].
@spayneTC
