About 16,000 runners are expected for this year’s race. It starts in Civic Center Park and goes through Washington Park, City Park and Cheesman Park.

Tim Cullen, manager of Athletes for a Cure, stopped by CBS4 studios to talk about the event and why the Prostate Cancer Foundation will now also benefit.

Watch Cullen’s interview in the video below:

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LINKS: Sports Authority Rock ‘n’ Roll Denver Marathon & 1/2 Marathon  |  Prostate Cancer Foundation  |  Athletes for a Cure

PHOTO GALLERY: See Images From The 2011 Race

Update: September 30: The CrossFit Central team ranked secondthird among all affiliates, raising more than $33,000 toward Athletes for a Cure (supporting prostate cancer research) and the Wounded Warrior Project. Worldwide, CrossFitters raised more than $1 million. Thanks to all who donated!

Original Post:

A week from Saturday, I’m going to take on a Fight, and I need your help. I’m joining CrossFitters and other athletes worldwide for Fight Gone Bad IV to raise money for two worthy causes: Athletes for a Cure and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Athletes for a Cure is part of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and leverages the performances of athletes to raise money to find a cure for prostate cancer, something 1 in 6 men will develop during their lives.

The Wounded Warrior Project helps our most severely wounded veterans, whose own fight went bad, putting them on the road to healing, both physically and mentally.

These are two amazing charities, and I’m proud to be participating in this event. My personal goal is to raise $1,000 for these two important organizations.

My gym, CrossFit Central, has organized the event for Austin at the Long Center on Lady Bird Lake. 250 athletes from around Central Texas will participate, joining CrossFitters across the globe in testing themselves against CrossFit’s signature workout.

Fight Gone Bad is tough. Designed to simulate a mixed martial arts fight, FGB is three grueling 5-minute rounds of 5 different exercises: rowing, medicine ball throws (“wall ball”), push presses (lifting a barbell overhead), box jumps, and high pulls (lifting a barbell off the ground to just under the chin). My goal is to score 240, which would be a personal best in this event.

While the fight might not go well for me, personally, together we can win the bigger fight. I’m asking my friends, family, and colleagues to donate 10 cents for every rep I hope to achieve next Saturday, a donation of $24. Of course, I appreciate any amount you can give, as every cent helps.

Please visit my donation page and join me in a Fight that we will WIN.

And join us next Saturday morning to watch some of Central Texas’ finest athletes, and people like me, as we compete against ourselves and the clock as we take on Fight Gone Bad.

Thanks for your support!

PARK CITY, UT  In the midst of prostate cancer awareness month, X Games gold medalist Steve Fisher (Breckenridge, CO) recalls what he felt at the age of 20 to learn that his father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in December of 2003.

“It was completely overwhelming,” Fisher said. “It was literally just before the first Grand Prix in Breckenridge. He had just turned 51 and went in for his routine screening and his report came back that there were traces of prostate cancer.”

According to statistics, one in every six men are diagnosed with prostate cancer just like Fisher’s father, Ed, who was treated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota a month after his diagnosis. Now, five years later, he remains cancer free.

“So far it hasn’t come back and he’s just really lucky that he caught it early enough to where they could get all of the bad cells,” Fisher said.

It was through his father’s experience and a desire to promote prostate cancer awareness and research funding that Fisher came to be involved with Athletes for a Cure, which is a program of the Prostate Cancer Foundation that enables athletes to raise money for the cause.

This year Athletes for a Cure was represented at more than 200 events across the US and everywhere we went we were greeted by men and their  families who for the most part were under 55-years old who had a prostate cancer diagnosis in the family. Here are just a few stories as told in a short video: http://www.vimeo.com/1881463

There would be no more appropriate time to ask you for your prayers and thoughts than Christmas Eve for the 186,000 men who, on a day they least expected it had their doctor walk into a room and say, “I’m sorry, but you have prostate cancer.” Please add a special thought for those 27,000 families that lost a man in their lives.

Please take a moment tonight to remember them all. Thank you.

Scott

This year Athletes for a Cure was represented at more than 200 events across the US and everywhere we went we were greeted by men and their  families who for the most part were under 55-years old who had a prostate cancer diagnosis in the family. Here are just a few stories as told in a short video: http://www.vimeo.com/1881463

There would be no more appropriate time to ask you for your prayers and thoughts than Christmas Eve for the 186,000 men who, on a day they least expected it had their doctor walk into a room and say, “I’m sorry, but you have prostate cancer.” Please add a special thought for those 27,000 families that lost a man in their lives.

Please take a moment tonight to remember them all. Thank you.

Scott

“You already have,” said the old man. “Everyone you may meet in life, even if they appear plain and insignificant… see each of them as a wise Holy Man. If you do this, then whatever problem you brought here today will be solved.”

Excellence is contagious. It affects everyone. It charts the direction of the business. It establishes the criteria for planning. It provides zest and vitality to the company. Once achieved, excellence has a talent for permeating every aspect of the organization.

Excellence creates commitment and dedication from everyone in the organization. Once it is accepted and expected, it must be nourished and continually reviewed and renewed. It is a never-ending process of learning and growing. It generates a spirit of motivation and is always the result of a creatively conceived and precisely planned effort.

Excellence inspires every phase of people’s lives. It unleashes an impact which influences every activity, every staff person. To instill it in an organization takes commitment. It demands adaptability, imagination and vigor, but most of all, it requires from everyone a constant state of self-discovery and discipline.

Excellence is an organization’s lifeline. It is the most compelling answer to apathy and inertia. It energizes a stimulating and pulsating force. Once it becomes the expected standard of performance, it develops a fiercely driving and motivation philosophy of operation. Excellence is a state of mind put into action. It is a roadmap to success. When a climate of excellence exists in people, staff, management, and projects, business becomes easier.

Excellence in a person and an organization is important… because it is everything.

Excellence is contagious. It affects everyone. It charts the direction of the business. It establishes the criteria for planning. It provides zest and vitality to the company. Once achieved, excellence has a talent for permeating every aspect of the organization.

Excellence creates commitment and dedication from everyone in the organization. Once it is accepted and expected, it must be nourished and continually reviewed and renewed. It is a never-ending process of learning and growing. It generates a spirit of motivation and is always the result of a creatively conceived and precisely planned effort.

Excellence inspires every phase of people’s lives. It unleashes an impact which influences every activity, every staff person. To instill it in an organization takes commitment. It demands adaptability, imagination and vigor, but most of all, it requires from everyone a constant state of self-discovery and discipline.

Excellence is an organization’s lifeline. It is the most compelling answer to apathy and inertia. It energizes a stimulating and pulsating force. Once it becomes the expected standard of performance, it develops a fiercely driving and motivation philosophy of operation. Excellence is a state of mind put into action. It is a roadmap to success. When a climate of excellence exists in people, staff, management, and projects, business becomes easier.

Excellence in a person and an organization is important… because it is everything.

Read Darren’s tory at: http://darrenritch.blogspot.com/

The idea is that small communities of like-minded people will gather together in places like Facebook and share their lives there, slowly weaning email down to the basic business communications uses. The downfall of MySpace and others that came before were the invasion of corporate interlopers into these communities. Companies and individuals who saw a target audience ripe for the picking and cheap to get at.

What’s rising up to fill the void are real communities that expect everyone to contribute as a member, much like the community we’re trying to form around Spinning Nation with Facebook, Twitter, the website and our blog. We feel that we need to offer valuable information, prompt service and most of all, an ownership in the Spinning community if we want to host it.

We hope you’ll join us in creating an international Spinning community with your comments, questions, contributions and communication. You can use Twitter to connect with people all over the country in seconds, or take your time and contribute to the blogs. Most of all, we want to create a vital and lively community who see Spinning Nation as a place to do some good, meet others and spread the positive message we enjoy in health and fitness. Welcome home.

Dr. Mel Siff, a highly regarded sports scientist and author of the book Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, points out that “twentieth-century scientists have raised the heart onto a pedestal, where it remains relatively unchallenged by any other bodily system.… Fascination with the heart has also spawned an industry which has captured the attention of health entrepreneurs and the public—long, slow distance (LSD) athleticism. Cardiac health and prolonged longevity came to be regarded as the consequence of ‘aerobic’ exercise.” Sound familiar? Moreover, he points out, all non-aerobic exercise has been deemed of little consequence in promoting cardiac health. Siff responds to that contention by citing study after study of anaerobic training and its effects on the heart (see, for example, Ralph Paffenbarger‘s studies of longshoremen and stair climbers). Astonishingly enough, hardly any studies have been conducted to show that “aerobic” (LSD) exercise is superior to any other form of exercise for preventing heart disease. So could the LSD/endurance community have it wrong?

In my job I get to meet a lot of those families and it’s amazing how un-mundane life is to them. My goal for the day today is to appreciate everything that happens in my life and to remember what I forget. It’s an awful, beautiful life.

In my job I get to meet a lot of those families and it’s amazing how un-mundane life is to them. My goal for the day today is to appreciate everything that happens in my life and to remember what I forget. It’s an awful, beautiful life.

- Van Van Arsdale

Winter’s dad, Micheal is doing everything he can to beat prostate cancer. That’s why the whole family formed Team Winter. It really is a team too. Mom Dawn is the team manager and besides that small task, she’s a full time Mom-and-half to the “Squirt” (nickname for Winter..like she needed one), and three brothers (swear I couldn’t make this up) Yukon, Magnum and Ruger. Mom/Dawn has these two other chores that bear mentioning, she’s caring for Michael who’s beating the oddsmakers to death over this prostate cancer thing, and she’s a full-time Ob/Gyn still open all-night pharmacy hours for deliveries. Any volunteers? Didn’t think so.

Now for the real brain breaker….in the middle of this Mom/Dawn knocked off her first Ironman Triathlon. 13 hours in the pouring rain. Feels like a late night infomercial doesn’t it…”But wait, there’s more…,” and there is.

It was Winter today in Tempe, AZ because Mom/Dawn said it was gonna be. Cancer/Mom? I’ll take Dawn and give you odds, anyone who can make it Winter in the middle of the desert is my best bet. Oh yeah, Winter won her age group……everyone under 11 who’s never going to give in. Wonder where she gets that?

This year I have 186,000 “bosses.” That’s how many American men will be diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in 2008.

My “boss” was a 58-year old man I’d met kayaking at the beginning of the summer. He saw the Athletes for a Cure logo on my boat, told he’d had a prostatectomy and did I want to hear his story? I said sure and gave him my email address.

His story arrived in my email box last night, and like 186,000 other men who endure mostly in silence, he asked me for two things. The first was, after reading his email detailing the all to common prostate cancer story, for me to understand why he’d kept silent for almost ten years. The second thing was for me to help him tell his story, so I’m going to in the next few posts.