On Sunday, Derek Coleman will run in his 38th Terry Fox Run. He has run in every one of the event’s 39 year history — except for one.
“I have done it many times, but the one that I missed is the big lesson of it,” said Coleman.
Raising more than $22,000 over the years, Coleman has a sticker for every Terry Fox Run he has participated in, over seven or eight different run sites.
“There’s only one year missing — 1986,” said Coleman.
As a resident of Cambridge, Coleman ran the first few events in that city, but switched to mostly supporting the Guelph run site at Silvercreek Park some time in the mid-1980s.
‘This run site here is just superb because not only is it scenic, but you do four 2.5 km loops. That means if you have issues, you’re not 5 km away from where you have to get back to,” said Coleman.
With the experience of running in numerous sites around the country, Coleman wanted to give a shout out to Guelph’s Dave Picard as a superb organizer for Run Site number 3.
“He has made extremely good choices with the site. It’s all signed so you have the kilometre marks along the way,” said Coleman. “Everything just works and there are no issues at all.”
Last September, Coleman was out east and participated in a much smaller Terry Fox Run in Summerside, PEI.
“It was a different scale, but they had a lovely boardwalk along the waterfront,” said Coleman.
In one small hiccup, the Summerside run site had not received its stickers and Coleman was not able to add to his collection.
“I got back here and called up Dave and told him they didn’t have any stickers. I asked him if he had any left over,” said Coleman. “The next day, he drove down to Cambridge and put one in my mailbox.”
“That’s just how good he is, because he knew it was important to me.”
Coleman began running in 1974 and worked the Terry Fox Run into his routine of about four or five 10k runs he would do every year. Almost 40 years later, the Terry Fox Run is the only event he still does year after year.
“Because I don’t train as much, the times are dropping,” said Coleman. “But I have been able to maintain the same weight over the past 40 years.”
As for the one missing sticker in his collection, Coleman decided to sit out the run in 1986 after a herniated disc in his back prevented him from training properly.
“That was a mistake,” said Coleman. “In spite of my wife’s telling me I was going to regret it, I didn’t do it that year.”
“I do regret it. There are two major life lessons — Terry Fox did it on one leg and I wasn’t able to walk it?”
And the second lesson?
“You should listen to your wife, because she often has a different point of view that can be right,” he said.
This year’s event will be held at Silvercreek Park on Sept. 15. Registration opens at 7:30 a.m. and runners can complete the 10 km route any time between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m.
