Sports
Work out for Yourself, Work Together for A Cure
Inspiring others to raise money for the American Cancer Society.
Things seem to come easy to Tracy Widolok. The Port Washington resident is blessed with a baby who never stops smiling, a husband who adores her, and a part time job teaching fitness classes at that keeps her in wow-shape.
Few people who know Widolok are aware of her problem: she’s suffered with chronic non-Hodgkin lymphoma for six years. Just recently she was hospitalized several times and lost sight in one eye due to it. Widolok says she’s hush-hush about her cancer because she’s not looking for sympathy. “Many other cancer victims are so worse off than me,” she said.
It’s not surprising that last year, when a co-worker at the Training Station suggested the gym run an event to raise money for cancer, Widolok gladly led the project. “We decided on a four-hour workout-athon, where participants could choose between yoga, spin, Pilates, Zumba and other classes held both indoors and outdoors, where they would exercise in groups,” she noted.
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Together, they raised a whopping $10,000 for the American Cancer Society (ACS).
With April being National Cancer Awareness Month, Widolok is teaming up once again with American Cancer Society (ACS) to encourage gyms across the country to hold similar fundraising.
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Hoping to inspire other fundraising at other gyms, Widolok is spreading the word about her own successful event on Nov. 7, 2010, when the community came together with instructors and a DJ giving their time, vendors sharing their profits, participants donating money, and local stores providing raffle prizes and refreshments.
The event had a unique theme and logo: Widolok worked on creating the theme, “Work out for Yourself Work Together for a Cure,” and she said her friend Jonathan Shackman designed the logo: a barbell shaped like an “awareness” ribbon.
In honor of the money raised at the “Work out for Yourself Work Together for a Cure” event, the ACS is displaying Schackman's logo and the Training Station logo on the websites and t-shirts of the Nassau County Relay for Life events.
Widolok says she enjoys sharing the word about the fundraising capabilities of the event to other gyms locally, state wide and even nationally.
“The thought of five or 10 regional gyms or hundreds of gyms across the country coming together for this one cause is amazing,” she said.
