PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Nearly 30,000 runners pounded the pavement for the 42nd Broad Street Run Sunday. The Philadelphia tradition benefits the American Cancer Society and several other charities.
Runner Jean Smith said it felt great to have the Broad Street Run return to its original spring time.
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“For all kinds of people,” Smith said. “You can be the slowest of the slow, the fastest of the fast.”
Achilles International is a nonprofit organization that empowers people with disabilities to participate in high endurance sporting events like the Broad Street Run.
“In the case of me and my dad we are both have visual impairments,” Kinzey Lynch said. “We’ve been running with Achilles for 10 years.”
Emi Perry was focused and ready for the run. It’s her fourth year participating as a wheelchair athlete.
“It’s such a nice course, especially for wheelchair because it’s a lot of down hills and it’s just pretty much straight, so it’s just a really fast course,” Perry said.
As the second in-person race since the pandemic was well underway, the city says participation levels are slowly getting back to normal.
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“Our typical race is around 40,000 runners,” Katherine Ott Lovell, the commissioner of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, said. “In October, right after the pandemic, we were around 18,000 and now we’re close to 28,000.”
That’s 28,000 thousand athletes, and many ran for a purpose like Sasha Feret and Kristen Osniak from Team Determination, which runs for the American Cancer Society.
“I am a cancer survivor,” Feret said. “This is my beautiful niece Kristen.”
Osniak was diagnosed with cancer in 2018.
“This is my first race back here in Philadelphia as a cancer survivor,” Osniak said.
“We’ve been affected by cancer in my family, both my parents and her grandmother also had leukemia and passed away, and it just means so much to raise money,” Feret said.
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All that running goes toward a good cause.