Cancer care spurs Roe's run

By REBECCA WALSH

Allison Roe will be pulling on her running shoes again this weekend, this time to raise money for breast cancer awareness and prevention.

Startled by the country's health statistics, which show one in 10 women will be affected by breast cancer, the winner of the 1981 New York marathon and mother of two decided to do something about it.

Tomorrow hundreds of runners will join Roe and her 13-year-old daughter, Jordyn, in Christchurch for the first of two runs to raise money for breast cancer work. The second will be in Auckland on April 13.

The money raised will be used to pay for a series of holistic community health workshops.

"I think everybody knows somebody who has breast cancer," says Roe. "My partner's mother died of breast cancer, now my sister-in-law has been diagnosed. She's just finished breastfeeding her second child. She's 41."

Roe, 46, who still runs about four times a week, says "going back to the basics" is a big part of what needs to happen.

"Part of the message with this event is to raise awareness for basic health and fitness," she says.

"Prevention is always better than the cure. If you can encourage people to look at balancing their lives with exercise and diet ...

"It's all common sense but we seem to have got away from it. We are all too busy to take care of ourselves."

Roe says one of the reasons for targeting a disease that affects women is that they are often the ones who influence what their children eat and how they exercise.

In the vegetable garden around the side of the Coatesville home Roe shares with her partner and children Jordyn and Elliott, 10, eggplants, silverbeet and tomatoes thrive. The family eat organic food and avoid pre-packaged foods, but not all the time - Elliott eats an icecream slice in between bursts of cricket.

The money raised from the ASB Step Ahead 3km or 10km runs will be used to pay for a series of holistic community health workshops around the country this year, focused on prevention and better management of the disease.

"We need to get to Maori, Pacific Island and rural women, who are perhaps not being diagnosed early enough," says Roe.

It costs $10 to join the run.