By Regina Walton on
The NYC Marathon took place last Sunday, and what a race! The NYC Marathon is one of the most difficult marathon courses around. However, that didn’t stop a long list of celebrities, athletes and even royalty from training and putting on their running shoes to benefit a long list of charities.
If we talked about them all, this article would be encyclopedic. To remedy that, here is the link to the NYC Marathon’s Famous Faces 2009 webpage which notes them all.
However, let’s talk about 10 of them. That’s a nice round number that captures both the breadth and diversity of charities represented in last week’s race.
Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winning actor Edward Norton ran for the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust. What’s interesting is he didn’t run the race alone: he ran with a group of 30. This group included other celebrities and several Maasai warriors. In addition, Norton has been promoting awareness of this charity via his Twitter stream. Seven-time Grammy Award winner Alanis Morissette also ran to benefit the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, as did illusionist extraordinaire David Blaine, who ran 26.2 miles for the Trust.
ER actor Anthony Edwards also ran the marathon. Edwards is the chairman of Shoe4Africa. He ran to raise funds for the new hospital in Kenya that Shoe4Africa will fund.
Model, actress, editor and author Veronica Webb ran to raise money for the Harlem United Community AIDS Center.
Robert Herjavec, a successful businessman and one of the sharks on ABC’s reality TV show “Shark Tank”, ran to raise funds for Team for Kids.
British TV personality, model and pop star Michelle Heaton ran to help Autism Action, a UK charity.
Speedskating Olympic gold medalist Dan Jansen ran for ING Run for Something Better team. Pro-hockey player Pat LaFontaine also ran to benefit the ING Run for Something Better team.
Prince of the Netherlands and excutive, Prince Pieter Christiaan Michiel, ran to raise money for the WWF.
Be sure to click over to the Famous Faces 2009 site to read about the other celebrity participants and their charities. It’s simply inspiring to see so many notable people out there to help those less fortunate.
Copyright © 2009 Look to the Stars
