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Hello everyone! Today, I’m gonna be talking about my experience with the CIBC Run for the Cure.

If you don’t know what it is, the CIBC Run for the Cure is an event held in multiple cities, organized by CIBC, to support research for breast cancer. This year, I did it downtown in Toronto with my mom and my grandpa. However, I was deceived and betrayed at the very last minute.

You see, I had intended on doing the 1K, but my mom signed me up for the 5K so I had to do it with her — because she didn’t want to be lonely. Midway through the 5K, I became very hungry since I hadn’t had breakfast, so my mom ended up buying me a doughnut and lemonade from Krispy Kreme.

While taking a snack break during the run, we passed through Chinatown, but all the shops were closed. I was starving, just looking at all the restaurants and bakeries, thinking: why did they have to put the run on a Sunday when nothing’s open? Then again, maybe the run was meant to promote good health — probably why they put it on Sunday, so people wouldn’t be tempted to stop for food. Well, that didn’t really work on me, because Krispy Kreme was still open.

So there we were — me and a couple of other runners just walking leisurely down the street, doughnuts in our mouths, lemonades in our hands, while the other runners looked at us with a mix of shock, awe, and horror.

During the walk, my mom suddenly decided to become an influencer. She had me take “social-media-worthy” pictures of her during the run. Sometimes, at the 1K, 2K, or 4K signs, she’d make me run ahead and record her running past them. She also had me take pictures of her downtown near this big church, which was right next to the water station — and that place was absolutely littered with cups because half the people forgot to use the recycling bins.

At one point, she didn’t like how the lighting turned out in a photo, so she made me take off my earbuds and gave me a mini-lecture on how to properly take pictures.

Aside from that, the rest of the run went pretty smoothly. There were lots of people — adults, kids, even infants who can now proudly say they supported breast cancer research from day one (literally). There were also a bunch of dogs there, which made me wonder: do dogs have their own beliefs about supporting breast cancer research? I’m not sure if human treatments work on dogs, so maybe they were just there for exercise… or maybe it’ll look good on their application to dog heaven.

There was also this massive truck, clearly part of the event, and lots of people were taking pictures on it. At one point, I even saw a dog standing on top of the truck while its owner was crouching under it acting like a dog. At that point, I just thought: what are people doing nowadays to get attention on social media? It was very funny though, I’ll admit.

Anyway, when we finished the run, I found out that my grandpa had been raiding the event area while we were still running. He had finished his 1K way earlier and got bored, so he just went around to every stall, talked to everyone, and collected every bit of swag he could find — bags, phone cases, flowers, t-shirts, pictures — everything! He stuffed it all into one small CIBC tote bag like it was no big deal.

For context, every year they hand out little souvenirs, and this year it was tote bags that you can wear like backpacks.

After the run, we decided to regain all the lost calories immediately by heading to Tosto’s for some great pasta. It was the perfect ending to the day.

So all in all, it was a pretty productive day — we did a run to support breast cancer research, and we also had Tosto’s for the first time. I’d say that not only did we do a good thing, but we also eat a good thing.

Anyway, bye everyone and see you later!