The Diabetes Road Race from Slave Lake to Wabasca started three years ago with high hopes of it becoming an annual awareness and fundraiser. It has become just that.
On Saturday, May 10 at the early hour of 7:00 a.m., first-leg runners from at least 14 teams will set off from the Sawridge Truckstop. Their last-leg counterparts will start trickling into Wabasca around 4:00 in the afternoon. When it’s all over and the pledges collected, there will likely be something in the range of $20,000 for diabetes research and local lifestyle-enhancing projects in Wabasca.
“We’re really excited,” says Pauline Yellowknee of the Bigstone Health Authority, chairperson of the organizing committee. When public health people refer to lifestyle as it relates to diabetes, they are talking about two things: diet and exercise. Type II diabetes is rampant among middle-aged (and often overweight people), and its symptoms are often aggravated by improper eating habits and the lack of regular exercise. Recognizing that something should be done about it, a group of Wabasca health care workers conceived the idea a few years ago of raising money for a walking trail in that community. Yellowknee says the first Diabetes Road Race in 2000 raised $16,000, $8,500 of which went towards the construction of a gravel path in Wabasca. The next year the municipal district was able to pave the trail with the help of $10,500 from the road race. Each year $7,500 of the total raised goes to the Canadian Diabetes Association to help fund its research into what everyone hopes will be an eventual cure for the disease.
The diabetes race has special significance for one participant. Anne-Marie Auger of Slave Lake will be running in memory of her mother, Caroline Noskiye, who passed away last year. Noskiye endured diabetes for the last 25 years of her life, losing her legs to the disease in the year before she died. She was a big supporter of the race, in which Auger and several members of her family have participated each year.
“Three years ago my mom was in the support vehicle,” says. “The second year she was in the hospital. Last year she was there in a wheelchair. Her family wheeled her to the finish line.”
Auger says the big thing about the race for her is not to compete to win, but to help raise awareness and funds.
“People need to be aware of this thing – how to take care of themselves,” she says.
Auger raised $1,100 last year – tops among individual participants she says – and she hopes to top it this time. She runs with the Sugar Rayz team of Slave Lake.
For more information on the Diabetes Road Relay Race, contact Pauline Yellowknee at 891-2000.

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