Race for the Cure has always seemed like a big deal in Portland. Probably other cities too, but I wouldn’t know about that. There are some big giant races that I always go to, like the Shamrock, but I always pass on Race for the Cure because there’s no clam chowder or beer, and there are tons and tons of people. The only time I had anything to do with it was when I worked as a volunteer for community service in high school (whenever I had to do community service for school or something I would just volunteer at a race). It was both the craziest and the most boring thing I’ve ever done. There were thousands and thousands of people there, but my job assignment was to go stand at a random corner downtown where the streets had been closed and redirect any cars trying to come through that random street at 7:30AM on a Sunday morning. So mostly I just sat there doing nothing, while everyone else participated in lots of fun race festivities. The only good parts were that I was with a friend, and I got a t-shirt that I later wore during swim practice to create more drag.
Ever since then, I’ve never even considered participating in this race. Aside from the sheer numbers of people there are, I also don’t appreciate how misleading it is. There is no cure at the end. At Bridge to Brews you run across some bridges and then drink brews. I did have issue with the naming of Pints to Pasta, but at least both pints and pasta are given to you at some point. At the Tillamook Bay Run, you run along the Tillamook Bay. These races all live up to their names. I had suspected as much, and after doing it, I can tell you, you don’t get a cure for anything at the end of Race for the Cure. Considering how many years they’ve been doing this (almost 30 years), I feel like I should be handed a cure at the finish line by now.
I’m by no means saying their efforts are futile, I do support the cause and think that the race does good things. At least it sounds good, I haven’t actually researched the foundation on my own or anything, but we all know that when people want to stop cancer from happening, that’s supposed to be a good thing. Even though you don’t get your cancer cured at the end of the race, they do have a bunch of other stuff, like yogurt and pink scarves. Then there was this whole section of the waterfront, that I didn’t bother going to, but looked like it had all the educational stuff about preventing cancer and early diagnosis. I would have named this race “Race for Early Diagnosis and Maybe One Day a Cure but Don’t Expect One Today.” I hope somebody from the race reads this and takes my idea into consideration.
You might be wondering why, after all these years of turning my nose up at this good-cause race, I decided to do it this year. Well, this year I got a free entry. So even though I woke up this morning at 6AM feeling exhausted and worn out and with a pretty bad food-hangover, there was no chance of staying in bed. Free race entries are almost impossible to turn down (although I may have been grateful to receive a free entry to the race’s “Sleep In for the Cure” option, where you still pay the $30, but instead of running you do nothing). Once I got downtown and started running, I didn’t feel any better. I figured I was probably running about 8:30-9:00 minute miles, but there were no mile markers so I couldn’t tell. It turned out I was running a pretty normal race pace, and finished in about 21:55, for a pace of 7:03. I’m hoping to break 21 minutes by the end of the year, so I need to step up my pace a little pretty soon. Every once in a while I remember that I wanted to break a 6 minute mile this year too (or more ambitiously, PR with a 5:50, but that sounds kind of hard at this point). Maybe I’ll work on that soon.
The most exciting part of this race was that my race number was 1000, which was exciting because everybody loves round numbers. Maybe I’ll take a picture for you later, if I didn’t lose it.
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