Kuala Lumpur Terry Fox Run

There will be a Terry Fox Run in Kuala Lumpur. For those interested, details follows:



Just in case the details are not clear to you in the mini poster above, here are the date, time, location, contact detail:

Date: Sunday, 4 November 2007
Time: 9.00 am
Location: Taman Tasik Perdana (Lake Garden)
Contact No.: 03-5630 6774
Email: organizer at terryfoxrunkl dot org
(replace "at" with @, "dot" with . and get rid of the space)
Photo by © Gail Harvey

Taman Tasik Perdana (Lake Garden) is behind Muzium Negara Malaysia (National Museum of Malaysia) situated along Bangsar Road. Museum Negara itself is opposite KL Sentral. To help you find the landmark, below is a photo of Muzium Negara Malaysia:

Muzium Negara Malaysia (National Museum of Malaysia)

Photo by superciliousness under Creative Commons license

Who is Terry Fox?

Here is some background for the Terry Fox run for those who do not know who Terry Fox was. Terrance Stanley Fox, better known as Terry Fox, was a Canadian famous for the Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research. It was a very unusual run, for Terry then only had one leg. His other leg was a prosthetic leg. That run is now celebrated internationally every September and considered as the world's largest fund raiser for cancer research. So Kuala Lumpur is a little late in organizing the run, but it is still great someone took the trouble to do so.

Terry Fox was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 1977 at the age of 18 after feeling pain in his right knee. Osteosarcoma is a form of cancer that often the cancer starts at the knee, then spread up into the muscles and tendons. The only way to treat Osteosarcoma at that time was to amputate his right leg several inches above the knee. After amputation, he was fitted with a prosthetic leg.

Terry Fox then decided to run from coast to coast 3 years after losing his leg with the objective of raising money for cancer research and called his run the Marathon of Hope. He hoped to raise $1 from each Canadian citizen from the run.

Marathon of Hope

The Marathon of Hope began on April 12, 1980 when Terry Fox started by dipping his leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John's, Newfoundland and intended to eventually dip it in the Pacific Ocean at Victoria, British Columbia. He intended to run about 42 km a day, the distance of a marathon. Unfortunately for Terry Fox, before he could finish his run, X-rays showed a lump the size of a golf ball in Terry's right lung and another lump the size of a lemon in his left lung. The tumor was bone cancer which got into his lung via the bloodstream.

By then, Terry Fox had already ran 5,373 km or around 37.5 kilometers per day through Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario. Because of the unfortunate development, Terry Fox was thus forced to stop. However, that is not the end of the story for the CTV television network organized a telethon to raise funds for the cause. Celebrities around Toronto were invited to participate, and the event raised millions of dollars.

Terry developed pneumonia in June of 1981 went into a coma on June 27. He died on 28th June, 1981, just a month short of his 23rd birthday.