Running for a Cause

Last Weekend a friend of mine, Paul Sibley attempted to run 16o miles in a ‘Round Oahu and Honolulu Marathon combination. He did this to raise donations for and awareness of a cancer victim’s plight; a young boy named Trevor Sims, from Louisiana, http://www.CancerRunner.org. Paul is a recent cancer survivor and his fight was a long and arduous one.

The weather became dismal, and as the night wore on it became clear that Paul was suffering the effects of Rhabdo, a kidney problem related to his extended exercise. Despite this he pushed on, only calling a halt when the long isolated stretch of Kaena point meant a lack of road support for hours. The risks to continuing on in his condition just became all to apparent.

It is always hard to do the right thing, sometimes even harder to determine what the right thing is. In this case Paul did the right thing twice. As I posted on the HURT site, Paul is our Hero not our Martyr. We don’t need to see him crumpled up on the side of the road or spending time in a hospital to believe in what he did, or the beauty of that effort.

I have often been asked why I don’t run for a cause. I never have a satisfactory answer. I don’t feel comfortable with it, and I go on the assumption that what I do in life should be enough. Then I consider the possibilities of what I could do, and wonder why I have not tried to help the Hospice cause. In some ways it strikes me as a commercialization of my deepest enjoyment, running. Yet I certainly do not regard what Paul did as any kind of commercialization and give him great credit for carrying out a praiseworthy and honorable act. Given my plans for the next few years, perhaps I need to look into making my running more than just a personal pleasure. It's a hard call.