While most of us get busy deciding on the flavour of cake ahead of our birthdays, New West resident Vanessa Woznow gets busy gearing up for a long run.
It all started in Feb 2018, when she celebrated her big day with a run around New West. Little did she know that her idea of a birthday "fun" run would one day bring in several thousands of dollars for a New West non-profit.
A runner all her life, Woznow wanted to recreate a run similar to the world-famous New York Marathon where the participants run through all of the five boroughs of New York.
So in 2018, Woznow pulled up the map, and chalked out a 21.1-kilometre route that covered all New West neighbourhoods.
She called it the "New West Neighbourhood Run."
“We, too, have many neighbourhoods in New West, even though we're such a small city,” said Woznow. "And it's so unique; you have the bridge to get to Queensborough, you have the waterfront, and you have the Queen's Park. You get a little bit of everything, which is really beautiful."
Woznow ran her birthday half marathon that year. And that was it for a while.
A run to raise funds
Two years went by before Woznow decided to “resurrect” her run again in 2021.
By that time, she was a mom of a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and, like everyone else, had lived through the tough pandemic days.
She recalled being surrounded by grim news — be it political news or about the “dark days of COVID” — on one hand, and by the “beauty, magic and light” that her daughter brought to her life, on the other.
Woznow made up her mind to focus on the positive side of her life and liven things up. And she could think of no better way to do that than to once again run the way she did back in the winter of 2018.
So, she laced up her shoes, and pulled up the old New West Neighbourhood Run route.
But that time, she decided to run to support New West Family Place — a social services organization that provides resources and support for families with young kids.
It seemed appropriate to do the run around the national Family Day — which coincidentally fell on the same week as her birthday, she said.
“New West Family Place is a great organization that supported me and my daughter, especially in the early days of COVID," said Woznow. "It was a place that I could turn to when I was having anxiety and needed someone to reassure me or provide me with the resources that I needed,” she added.
“There's a tremendous sense of community and compassion. They meet all parents and families where they're at in their journey, which is incredibly empowering — especially for new parents who maybe don't feel that grounded or confident. But they get you there, which is incredible.”
Woznow decided to raise $1,000 for New West Family Place through her run.
She posted about it on Twitter on New Year’s Eve 2020, and word spread like wildfire, said Woznow; in one night, she ended up hitting the $900 mark.
Donations flooded in; overall, she ended up raising triple the goal — “Over $3,000!” she said.
'New West community is beautiful and giving'
“It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “I feel that the New West community is very beautiful and giving, but they're also very proud. I think there's an amazing group of individuals, especially online, who love to be little champions of the city.”
This year, her goal is to raise $5,000.
Woznow will start the run at 8 a.m. on Feb. 18, at the corner of 10th Street and Queens Avenue, head into uptown, then to the West End, Connaught Heights, over the Queensborough Bridge and then to the final destination — city hall.
"It’s a nice clean route. Though it's pretty brutal in terms of the hills, I feel like I have definitely accomplished something by the end of it.”
Though a one-woman run, Woznow said, “I would love to think of it in terms of the long term and open it up and have it be available to anyone who wants to run — whether to fund-raise or not."
"I've always thought about the fact that New West doesn't actually have a race... it doesn't have a run. How cool would it be to have a run in New West and still keep that fundraising component to it?” she said.
“If someone were to come to me right now and say, ‘Hey, I want to do this too,’ I’d go like ‘Let's partner and work together on it.’”
Woznow will be updating her running route on Twitter. You can either follow her run virtually or join her on the road to run along or to cheer. Donate to Woznow's fundraiser at Canada Helps.
