Sponsor me in the AIDS Marathon!

Last year, my friends and family and co-workers and even strangers like you who occasionally drop by to read my blog—and how cool are you?—helped me raise $3,001 in donations when I ran the Chicago Marathon on behalf of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. This year will be my fifth marathon, my third with the AIDS Foundation and my first with the foundation’s new advanced training program, which promises to help me FINALLY beat my four-hour goal.

But running a marathon in under four hours is just a goal of vanity. People living with HIV and AIDS have much more important goals … like staying healthy so they can go to work and afford insurance and medical care and food for themselves and their families.

Despite ongoing advances in the treatment of AIDS, the epidemic is far from over. More than one million Americans—and 40 million more around the world—are now living with HIV. It’s no longer the gay disease once self-righteously dismissed by the religious right; it’s now the LEADING cause of death among adults age 15-59 worldwide—gay or straight, black or white, male or female. The LEADING cause. That’s a lot of people who are not only sick, but potentially homeless, jobless, ostracized, trying to raise children or otherwise in desperate need of what the AIDS Foundation provides.

So please. Whip out your credit card, click on the red logo above or to your right and join me in our race to control—and maybe even beat—this disease.

You’ll get a tax writeoff. The AIDS Foundation will get much-needed funds for providing direct medical care, food, housing and other vital services for people living with HIV and AIDS. Your friends and neighbors living with the disease will get assistance and dignity and hope. And I will maybe get to beat a goal that’s been taunting me since 2004. Everybody wins!

Remember: Sponsoring me is as easy as clicking the red logo. And thanks again for your generosity!

Jake

P.S. It can take up to five business days for your donations to be acknowledged on my pledge page. But the AIDS Foundation of Chicago has been extremely prompt at mailing acknowledgement letters for tax deductions. And after the marathon I'll post a list of donors here AND send personal thank-you notes and emails to all of you for whom I have contact information. But please don’t let the site's weird little technical problem stop you from donating. You can give any amount you want.