16 Runs with 16 Friends: April Update (Part 1 of 6)

April 2 was World Autism Awareness Day! What better way to celebrate it than by running a Virtual Autism Awareness Race with friends who also love those with Autism?

Run with Friends #8 and #9: Autism Awareness Virtual Race

Date: April 2 2016, my first time running a virtual race!

Temperature: -1C

Distance: 5K

Michael, Danny and I love those with Autism!

When I saw that someone was ordering bibs and medals for a Virtual Autism Awareness in April, I immediately thought that I should find some people to run this with. I saw that Michael and Danny were interested in this event, so we connected and soon set a date to run together on World Autism Awareness Day!

I met Michael and Danny last summer when we worked at Autism Ontario Kids (AOK) summer camp, but I never knew whether they liked to run or not. Regardless, I'm glad they wanted to run together for those with Autism. We decided to wear our AOK camp shirt to honour the occassion, and to my surprise, Danny showed up in his Vibrams! I've never run with someone in toe-shoes until that day we ran together! We even ran into a guy who Michael identified as working for GoogleMaps because he was carrying a large box on his back (which I thought was a boxed fridge) and walking around with a camera. I wonder if we got captured in the map. Our run together was relaxing and we added a sprint in the last 100 metres! It was really nice to catch up with these guys and I even got to ride in a pick up truck afterwards.

When we worked together as counsellors at AOK last summer, I learned a lot about kindness and patience from Michael and Danny. Danny was the one who inspired me to volunteer for a shift with Habitat for Humanity GTA last year and he's keeping me accountable in my goal of donating blood at least once this year. Michael is highly involved in Ryerson University's Social Work Students' Union and drummer in the band Six at Best (check out their music!). They're both stand up guys who are passionate about giving back to the community in their own way. During our run and chat together, I also learned a few new things from them. But what happens on the run, stays on the run. ;)

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I feel so lucky to have been able to run with 8 people in April! 8! I can't believe it! Special thanks to Jean-Paul Bedard for sharing about my goal on social media and connecting me with some friends of #JPsTeam. ^_^

Unfortunately I've been procrastinating writing about the runs because it's already May and I haven't written about all the runs from April yet! I'm sorry, but I will try my best to get those updates written out within the next few weeks. Definitely before May comes to an end.

Until next time, keep running!