On August 18, Team Garrett gathered for their final appearance at America’s Finest City Half Marathon and 5K at Balboa Park in San Diego, CA.
Team Garrett is led by long-time family friend Terry Owens and comprised of Garrett Baumann’s friends and family, who for the last 7 years have gathered at this race to raise money for NF research in Garrett’s name and rally behind their beloved son, brother, and friend.
Earlier in the month, Garrett made the difficult decision to stop treatment. This was also to be the final AFC race for Team Garrett. Garrett’s mom Suzanne shared some thoughts, “The decision to make this our last race is because it has become more challenging at home to care for Garrett AND organize a fundraiser. Garrett’s medical needs have increased. His vision in the right eye has become blurred and may not recover. We have been to several specialists to see if we can save his vision. As you can imagine, Garrett is fearful of being deaf and blind. He is also seeing other specialists to help alleviate his pain, difficulty sleeping, muscle wasting and depression. His medications have limited effect so we are trying to adjust all of it with only some relief. To add to the list, Garrett had surgery recently to remove four tumors, but the surgical site in one area is not healing. Thus, he is not able to resume his cancer treatment to keep his tumors from growing. Given all these problems, we never know what our day will be like.”
Garrett passed away on August 7, 2019.
On the day of the race, more than 75 runners dressed in Nintendo costumes handmade by Suzanne and other friends because Garrett loved Nintendo. The weekend was dubbed Garrett’s Parade. When Garrett died, Suzanne and Craig, Garrett’s dad, wanted to keep going with the race and knew Garrett would be watching over everyone and would enjoy seeing everyone out in Nintendo costumes.
Over the past 7 years, costumes have always been involved with this race. Garrett’s friends from childhood (about 20 of them) continue to come back year after year to do this race in honor of Garrett. It’s not a competitive race; Garrett’s friends run the race together at a leisurely pace, enjoying ones company and enjoying being out there on the course representing CTF. Those that don’t run stand along the finish line and cheer everyone in while wearing their CTF gear or Nintendo costumes.
On Saturday night the Baumanns also hosted a potluck pre-race dinner. Board member Michael Peterson was there to greet everyone, meet the family, and speak on behalf of the latest and greatest that CTF is doing.
 |
|
At the race, Team Garrett was interviewed by ABC10:
This year alone, Team Garrett raised over $33,000 (their highest total ever). Over the past 7 years they have raised over $160,000 and have had over 540 runners on the team. Donations in memory of Garrett can do so at https://ctf.org/garrettbaumann
Click here to view more photos of Team Garrett.
