The History

The Inspiration

My mom, this race. On June 1, 2012, I lost my mom, Wendy Cardinal, my most favorite person in the world, to gynecological cancer. She was my core, my biggest champion and my best friend. Though the words I know seem deeply inadequate to relate what she meant to those who knew and loved her or how profoundly we miss her; she remains with us, reminding us every day through our laughter, our smiles and occasionally our tears what a profound impact she continues to have on our lives.

 

The inspiration for the Cardinal International 5k came from the desire to remember and honor her memory. But it quickly grew from being personally motivated to something more. The Cardinal International 5K is a way to bring people together to celebrate, honor those we love, to motivate and inspire each other and importantly to raise awareness and support for gynecological cancer prevention and treatment so that together we can do our small part to help prevent any woman; mother, daughter, sister, partner, wife or friend from leaving us too soon.

The Cardinal International 5k: How it all began.

The first Cardinal International 5K was held on November 2, 2014. It began when I signed up to run in the National Race to End Women’s Cancer in Washington, DC and posted my intention to run on Facebook. Quickly, my friend Mia Ali said that she and her husband Mo would like to run too, but from the UK. Then we thought- why not invite others to run with us?

And before we knew it we had over 50 people from around the world wanting to run! Happy, surprised and amazed by the flood of support for such a great cause, we thought – “Why not give ourselves a name? And while we are at it- why not invite everyone we know to run with us? And maybe even some people we don’t know!”

The idea is simple. All you had to do to participate (and all you still need to do!) was run or walk a 5k on the Race Day wherever you were in the world. Simple as that. To our amazement our small virtual race spread farther and faster than we ever could have imagined and before we knew it over 250 people signed up  representing over 70 cities and 30 countries, making it a true global community event. Since we began we’ve now raised over $30,000 to fight women’s cancers! Visit the Photo Gallery to see all the inspiring photos from around the world from the CI5K each year!

The 1st Cardinal International 5k went mini-viral and showed us that while the world is big it is also small and that coming together to share our stories, honor our loved ones and get moving to raise awareness for this great cause, is healing, inspiring and brings us all just a little closer together in this great big world we live in.