US – 18,500 Runners at Philadelphia Rock ‘n’ Roll ½ Marathon!

On October 31 2015, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series held a half marathon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rock ‘n’ Roll had partnered with The AACR Foundation (American Association for Cancer Research) for this event. RRT volunteers from Philadelphia were pleased for the opportunity to assist at this event and help out for such a great cause.

Setting up the water for the runners

AACR is the first and largest cancer research organization in the world with more than 35,000 professionals from over 100 countries all working in effort to eradicate cancer. Proceeds from this event and many other fundraising events like it are essential to the AACR Foundation continuing with their ground-breaking research for cancer. Thanks to advances in biomedical research, the number of people with cancer are living longer and higher quality lives. In the US alone, an estimated 14.5 million cancer survivors are alive today, with close to 380,000 of those individuals receiving their cancer diagnoses as children.

All Set up and ready to go

It was an early start for RRT with the volunteers arriving at 6:30 am to start setting up the water stations.  It didn’t take long for everything to get organized and ready for the first group of runners. RRT set up their water station in 4 sections, each with 2 sets of tables on either side of the road. Each of these tables held hundreds of cups filled with water waiting for the thirsty runners to start arriving. These cups were stacked with a layer of cardboard in between to keep the cups sturdy.

Cheering some of the 18,500 runners along

It was the job of the RRT volunteers to hand out water to the runners & cheer them on.  RRT was stand number 11, which meant the runners still had 2 more miles to go on the course. Despite the fact that the runners had already ran so far, everyone was still in bright spirits.  There were some truly remarkable sights that day, including a few runners with one leg as well as many running for loved ones they had lost.

Another two miles to go in the race!

The day was a great success! The Event Coordinators were expecting 10,000 runners however the turnout was 18,500 runners! The RRT volunteers had a lot of fun and received many compliments especially with the clean up process.

RRT Volunteers during clean up

The day was a great triumph all round, with over $144 000 USD raised to support research and assistance for those living with Diabetes. At the end of the day the main question from the RRT volunteers was “when can we do this again?