Running of the Gnomes is back for it’s 7th year!
The “small” run will be held again October 15th, 2016 at 7pm EST(New York Time for overseas friends) /4pm PST on Scarlet Crusade-US.
7pm is race start time, so show up early, get a guild invite to one of our several guilds to help us headcount gnomes and meet all your fellow gnomies! Be sure to bring your S.E.L.F.I.E camera!
Running of the Gnomes will benefit the Cleveland Clinic and the creators of the Touhy Vaccine that is currently in the early stages of human clinical trials. If the drug is successful, it could be the end of breast cancer.
The whole idea was to raise money for breast cancer, and Gnomes were one of the few races with pink hair making it easy for everyone to rock the pink look on a low level character, and the idea of small change and a small gnomes doing big things was appealing.
Back in 2009, Skakavaz and I came up with the idea to turn SeeD’s tabards pink for the month of October. It was a huge hit with our guild, and at the time, several other guilds on our server were doing similar things.
In 2010 we decided to put together a fun “little” run, with some friends and guildies where we would run from the Gnome/dwarven starting area to the end, and play some games and then have a party at the end, and raise some money for charity. We expected at most 40-50 Gnomes. 140 showed up!!
Every year, we turn our tabards pink, people roll new little Gnomes, in 2013 we had about 1,000 Gnomes show up, and raised $1,305.00! in 2014 over 1,300 Gnomes came briefly causing the server to crash while we were creating the heart and surpassing our $1,500 goal. Last year, more than 2,450 of you came out in support, and helped us raise over $4,000!
Our goal this year yet again is $2,500 and we hope to meet or beat it! (If we could smash last year’s fundraising, even better!)
Why Breast Cancer? There’s so many charities that do this.
October is breast cancer awareness month. We understand we’re sugar coating something devastating for people with cute gnomes to open up a conversation, but for a good reason. Everyone’s been affected by cancer of some form. Plus, we really realize that breast cancer isn’t just a woman’s issue. It affects our moms, our sisters, but also our dads, our brothers, our friends, guildies, coworkers, and many other people in our lives.
One of the worst parts is that all around us there are so many people playing the game who are so young who don’t even think about checking themselves or being right age to be going to go get their regular mammograms or are even putting them off for whatever reason.
We feel even if the pink hair and cute outfits or all these Gnomes remind just one single person to check themselves to get a mammogram or encourage that family member who hears to go in to the doctor who’s been putting it off we’ve done our job for the year.
Plus it’s really hard to miss around thousands Gnomes doing anything, let alone thousands Gnomes with the same colored hair stampeding through half a continent. Hopefully we do start discussions that save lives
We’re also raising money along the way, and encouraging members of the community to open up discussion about getting screening to prevent and catch all forms of cancer.
What do I have to do to participate?
Easy! Roll a Gnome on Scarlet Crusade, give it pink hair, give it a cheeky name or a name that means something to you (We love tasteful jokes, but please nothing vulgar, or that will warrent a name report for.) or any name at all.
On the day of the event for the few hours before the event starts, myself, and friends will give you an invite to one of our few “Racing Guilds” (Gnomies are too low to participate in raids, so this is our work around to getting a head count.) Show up early, and we’ll give you tabards, and people hanging out from various other servers.
Yet again we’ll be racing to Booby, er, Booty Bay, and if we can, this year, our goal yet again is a heart! The first year wasn’t so bad, last year was super hard and we had to jump in the water. We’re hoping for another great screenshot of the gnomes making a heart on top of the roof.
We look forward to seeing familiar faces, people from last year and the year before (did you know you can tell how long racers have been racing by their ranks in the guild?) and new people this year, to raise awareness, and to join us for this fun event! Bring your friends, bring your guild, bring your whole server!!
/gnomerun and chat channels.
Our chat channel /gnomerun is to connect all of our Gnomies, in game.
During the run we will turn off guild chat for everyone but officers. It’s not a punishment, it’s just because chat scrolls too quickly with 1,000 people talking at once for us to help you guys know where to go. We’ll turn it back on right after the run.
We would like to discourage the act of using /y or /s to communicate with so many of us, as it will reduce the quality of your run, and cause lag or server stability issues. /gnomerun is the best choice, or whispering people of your choice. You can also party up with up to five people. As soon as the run is over, we officers will turn back on guild chat, and you will be able to chat in both /g and /gnomerun to your heart’s content!
What’s this about an after party?
Every year once the run is done, we release the Gnomes and they’ll take a trip across the sea to run up from Rachet to Ogrimmar, and go give kisses or lick Saurfang. Maybe he’s fan of Gnomes?
What’s this about small change?
The very first year when we expected it to be only friends and guildies we asked guild members and other participants to donate based upon the number of Gnomes who showed up, in small change amounts. For example, people would pledge that for every Gnome that attended they would donate a penny, nickle, or dime.
Some people now donate whatever they can, but some people still donate this way, and it’s fun to see just how many Gnomes we have! A few hours after the run, I’ll let you know how many Gnomes and escorts ran with us, and post it online.
You don’t have to donate if you participate, but you’re free to donate if you’d like! Plus, coming does help raise the amount that some people donate to this day!
The charity of choice this year is yet again the Touhy Vaccine which has made progress since last year and started human clinical trials.
We have a fundraising page with the Cleveland Clinic. We’ve found them to be top notch to use every year! If you have any questions, feel free to let us, or them know!
http://ccf.convio.net/goto/gnomerun2k16
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