I'm going back to Brooklyn

Let's face it, NY and NYers have a reputation. A reputation for many things. It's a big, crowded, loud dirty and some times impersonal city. The same can be said for the people that live here...sometimes. Though really, the same can be said for people who live anywhere. NY is also a bunch of very distinct neighborhoods and tons of communities squashed into not a ton of spaces. As John Stewart put it, we're a buncha small towns just stacked on top of each other.

Last night, the  running community of NYC came together for Greg Hamiliton the manager of a local running store, Jack Rabbit. Greg's 22 and was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer. In less than a month, Jack Rabbit along with Cititri put together a 5k race in Prospect Park to help raise money for Greg. While he's lucky to have a job and insurance, he really can't work while undergoing treatment and the cost of living while fighting cancer can easily go through the roof. 

When I showed up at the park last night, over 600 people had already pre-registered. By the time I signed up, I was #827. When the race started, they had run out of numbers. 

Last night, we easily raised $20k for Greg. For someone most people running dont know or had met in the store. Now that's community.

My club, FRNY, has a charitable foundation which was initially set up to help member during the AIDS crisis. We now do outreach to other organization and folks in need. The foundation pledged $10 for every Front Runner who ran last night, added at least another $400 to the effort and the blue and orange was in full force last night.

It doesn't matter how I ran last night (um, not well) what matters is everyone coming together to help someone else, something we as runners can never do too much of.