I've volunteered at several Race for the Cure 5Ks

[obamanut2012]

Including actually being on the organizing/race directing committee. This is how I first learned how Big Business/Brand Protecting they are, and which lead me to do research on Komen. I haven't had anything to do with them for several years because of what I found out.

But, what makes it worse: have any of you ran or volunteered at a Komen 5K? And seen the legions of cancer victims and survivors run or limp or wheel themselves across the finish line, crying and proud? And seen the huge checks they and their friends write to Komen, and all the expensive merchandise they buy. I've also always had a hinky feeling about why they let so many runners in, much more than any other 5K I've either worked with or ran in.

Just my two cents. YMMV

[MichiganVote]

1. I wonder how many runners were supported by PP

[KT2000]

2. who else but republicans

would come up with the idea to have cancer survivors run for donations for gods sake. They require participants have health insurance and they have to have first aid tents along the route. I have always thought it was sick.

What pisses me off the most is that they are scooping up most of the money that people donate for breast cancer. Does anyone think they are going to investigate anything that will offend their "corporate partners?"

What was it that you found in your research?

[obamanut2012]

4. lol yes

And how they really push for teams and use shame and scare tactics to get participants to bully people into donating to them and/or their team.

Some of these poor women have no place being out there participating, most of the time in hot sun and humid weather. But they do it because they want their daughters, their granddaughters, their nieces, and women yet to be born to be free from this cancer. It became very upsetting for me to see this, and worse yet, to help make it happen. I felt like a grifter.

Again, YMMV.

[nanabugg]

5. To funny! And sad. nt

[Suich]

3. Tell us more, please!

[obamanut2012]

7. Many of the events also exclude men

Men whose loved ones have died or have survived breast cancer. Men also get breast cancer. This really rubbed me the wrong way. maybe this has changed in the last few years.

One year, a local sorority came to one of the training sessions en masse, wearing shorts they had had printed up with the name of their sorority and Race for the Cure. They were told to either take them off or leave, and that they were NEVER legally permitted to wear those shirts. Whatever you may think of sororities, these girls raised ALOT of money that year.

Just things like that.

I wish someone else would come up with an event.

[Suich]

10. Thanks! I had no idea!

There's a Race for the Cure here in Seattle on June 3...could be interesting.

[obamanut2012]

11. It will be

[Ruby the Liberal]

6. Yes, annually for years now as an organizer.

We don't do a 5k though, we do a 24 hour 'relay' with teams.

It has always been a blast, but I'm done.

[obamanut2012]

8. Some are doing 5 milers now

Or so I've been told.

You know what I'm talking about.

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. Yes I do.

Never comfortable with it, and furious when they started unleashing all of the lawsuits over Pink and 'race for the...'

This week has been really eye opening.

[obamanut2012]

12. You know the film of Bergen Belsen survivors toddling towards the liberators?

My breaking point was seeing a woman toddling like that, not quite that skeletal but obviously very thin and frail, a hat on her very bare head, being encouraged by one of the "head people" to toddle along, only another mile! In the heat. I said she had to DNF and go to one of the tents. This woman told me, "No! Her mother is waiting for her in a wheelchair at the finish line. It'll make a great photograph."

W
T
F

I know two women who have died from breast cancer, one from ovarian, and many who have survived it. That was it for me.

I say: instead, run a LOCAL 5K where 100% of the entry fees go to a LOCAL charity, and write a nice check out to a legit cancer org, national or local, or to PP.

[Ruby the Liberal]

13. My biggest issue was with team shirts

For the relay, most teams are sponsored by local businesses and team members made up of employees and their friends and family. It is common to have t-shirts printed up on fluorescent fabric with the name of the team, date, the relay as the cause and the local business being represented. Not a huge investment and was really fun (I saw some really creative stuff over the years). Every year, teams would compete to see who could come up with the LOUDEST shirts and the most creative team names.

It was about 2006-7 when the Komen-nazis started clamping down on this. Race for the cure wasn't allowed, nor any derivation of it and God forbid anyone include a pink ribbon in the silk screening.

It went from being a lot of fun to being one HUGE pain in the ass. Sucked all of the oxygen right out of the room.

That said, because it is a 24 hour relay, the survivors participate in a single lap on a HS track - many of them in their wheelchairs or with their walkers and many with oxygen and other medical devices (and with people walking along with them to help them).