Runners ready to race aginst cancer on Saturday

The third annual Hoosiers Outrun Cancer run/walk, a fundraiser for The Bloomington Hospital Olcott Center for Cancer Education, will be held Saturday on a course beginning at Memorial Stadium. \nThe goal of the five-mile event is to raise $100,000 for the Olcott Center, whose mission is to provide support and education for those diagnosed with cancer and their families.\nLast year, HOC attracted 2,027 people and raised $75,000, making it the largest run-walk in Monroe County, according to a press release. \nCoordinating Committee Chair Michael Shermis said he is cautiously optimistic about the event reaching it goal.\n"I'd love to see about 2500 (participants)," Shermis said. "If the weather's good, we'll have a chance of breaking it."\nHOC is the key fundraising event for the Olcott Center, which although founded to support breast cancer victims, recently expanded its mission to provide support for all types of cancer. The $100,000 figure is the estimated yearly budget needed for the Center to stay open.\n"Community support is how the cancer center will function," Fundraising Co-Chair and co-founder Dorothy Ellis said. "So that's why this run/walk is so important." \nThe Center fills a necessary gap, providing the cancer education and support that a hospital or doctor cannot. \n"It's a chance to help people one on one," HOC participant and cancer survivor Liz Bailey said. "When you're first diagnosed with cancer, you're scared. It's a new world, a whole new language. You need someone who can help to translate all you're saying. Having someone who is a health educator, it gives the patient someone to talk to." \nThose running or walking in HOC often have a personal stake in the quality of treatment of cancer, having battled cancer personally or with a family member. Twenty-two year-old Jessica Brandes, mother of two and freshman, lost her husband to bone cancer in May.\n"It's easy to be bitter and say I can't help my husband now, but I guess I have to be mature about it and say that I could save someone else's husband or someone's else's daddy," Brandes said. "It just struck me personally and I decided to try to do all I can."\nSometimes the reason a walker is involved can also change, even in an event as young as HOC. Linda Mall is a first grade teacher at Unionville Elementary School.\n"Initially I was doing it just to support a friend -- in support of Dorothy Ellis," Mall said. "And then last year I developed cancer. So now it's much more meaningful to me."\nEighty percent of the staff at Unionville is walking or giving an in-spirit donation, a steady increase of involvement at the school since the first year of the event.\n"Everyone felt the camaraderie to do this," Mall said. "Last year, it was a month after my surgery, but I still walked a mile."\nSupport on campus ranges from a contingent travelling from the Collins Living-Learning Center to the active support of the Greek system. Approximately 50 members of Alpha Chi Omega will be running or walking on Saturday. \n"It's such a great cause and it's such a great run that they have every year," Alpha Chi Omega member and junior Jennifer Mancino said. "We feel that our house has been touched by cancer and it's just important for us to participate and show we care."\nRunning for the first time is 43-year-old Bailey, a stage-four melanoma survivor, as she fights a cancer that is usually considered terminal within two years of diagnosis. \n"(The race) really helps me to take my mind off of it and focus on a more positive side," Bailey said. \nWhether participants are survivors or not, whether they are running or walking, most believe that cancer affects everyone, and there is a pressing need for research and support.\n"I personally don't know anyone one way or another whose life has not been touched by cancer," Bailey said. "But I hope in my lifetime that cancer will change from being a terminal disease to a chronic disease -- making cancer something we can live with instead of dying from."\nPre-registration for Hoosiers Outrun Cancer will be held on September 27 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Gladstein Fieldhouse, east of Assembly Hall. Contact 353-5000 for more information.