As part of a yearlong program, Saucony and iRun magazine are working together to profile a year in the life of ten extraordinary athletes. Along with being a member of this extraordinary group, Christa Davidson kicks off with introductions of the others.
By Christa Davidson
When you consider that I am trying to impress my editor (who handed me an assignment request with a tight timeline) yes was my answer when he asked if I could work on a piece finding inspirational runners on a joint project with Saucony.
The runners needed to be doing charity work, and not just that, they needed to represent something bigger than themselves. Something creative. Something inspiring, and they needed to be runners or walkers with a real love of the sport. They also needed to be female and male, ideally equally represented and of various ages.
I contacted people I knew from social media, from across Canada and enlisted them as soldiers of my search. Over a few days I had some connections to several runners who were doing great work. There are a lot of people out there who are supporting great causes through running and fortunately ten committed women and men suddenly came into my pressured for time, busy life .
Fundraising tends to work for runners because the donor realizes that you will do the hard part of running the race if they do the easy part of loosening their purse strings, so it really is a perfect partnership for runners and charities.
My wonderful search soldiers did a fabulous job of pointing me in the direction of eleven heroes that they thought would be wonderful examples of the kind of spirit that would inspire readers of iRun.
In the coming months we will have the privilege of following several of these awesome examples of Canadian selflessness as they train, fundraise, laugh, cry and run their way to helping their chosen charities improve the lives of Canadians that they don’t even know, just like Terry did.
Please meet the #FindYourStrong heroes we’ll be following all year:
Tara Berry
Krysten Siba Bishop
Catherine Watkins
Jean-Paul Bedard
Shannon Penway and Joel Payeur
Monique Lo
Alicia Woodside
Looking for more motivation? Read additional #FindYourStrong stories here.
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