TCS New York City Marathon

More than fifty thousand people cross the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge on the first Sunday in November. A handful of them are wearing Team CMT singlets, and they are running a marathon for a disease that makes walking hard.

That contrast is the whole point, and it is why this is the most visible thing HNF does all year. A Team CMT runner raises money, but more than that they put the disease in front of a few hundred people who have never heard of it, one conversation at a time, across the months they are training.

If you already have a place in the race, you can run it for Team CMT. You set up a fundraising page, HNF helps you promote it, and the money goes to CMT research and patient programs rather than into the event.

You do not have to run to be part of it. Sponsoring a runner counts, and so does turning up on the course. Supporters at the twenty-mile mark in the Bronx, where the crowd thins and the race gets genuinely hard, do more for a runner than they will ever be told.