This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of running for a charitable organization for the first time ever. In all my years of running, I had never signed up to run a race for any other reason than I personally wanted to run it.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am an ambassador for Still I Run. This is a community that raises awareness for mental health and aims to reduce the stigma around it. As an ambassador, I got to run the Fifth Third Riverbank 25k in Grand Rapids as part of the Still I Run team. The requirements for the team were minimal, each member simply had to raise $100 for Pine Rest‘s Mental Health Services. Since I had never run as part of a team for a charitable organization, I had obviously never fund-raised for one either. That turned out to be a blast! I loved talking to people about Mental Health (good thing I’m a therapist, eh?) and continuing to raise awareness about it. And here I thought fundraising would be the challenging part!
At a past job, I had a boss that used to tell me I should run for charity. She said I was “running for no reason” and that I should “put those miles to good use.” Naturally, the rebel in me violently opposed running for charity as a direct result of this conversation. Running for no reason?! B, please. I run for me, my mental health, and my physical health. As you might expect, this woman was not a runner. Nor did she have any good self-care techniques. Fortunately, I did not let that conversation steer me away from charitable running forever.
The best part is that Still I Run supports and raises awareness for the exact reasons I run in the first place. My mental health is largely dependent on running and I am proud to represent Still I Run. You’ll be seeing me running for charity much more often. As for the Riverbank Run itself? Incredible race. It was extremely well organized, had tremendous crowd support, and was a beautiful course. The only negative thing I can say about this race is that we ran by a very aromatic Burger King at about mile 14. Nothing smells worse than BK at mile 14, but what can you do? Oh, and each runner gets a free beer after the race. Win win win win win win win win.
