Another Large Turnout For NYC's Race For The Cure

NEW YORK (CBS 2) -- The skies were gray and the forecast was anything but promising, but no amount of rain would have kept away the thousands who went running in Central Park for the Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure.

The Race has become one of the City's biggest Fall happenings. Some 25,000 people ran, walked, strolled, and even hula-hooped towards a single goal.

CBS 2 was a proud sponsor of the event, which has been held in New York for 20 years and which many participants said was really just getting started.

"Today is the beginning of the end of breast cancer," said Nancy Brinker. She created the event, and named it after her sister.

"I wanted people to know who Susan Komen was. It was 30 years ago she died, and 30 years ago that I made the promise to her that I would help her in her quest to end breast cancer forever," Brinker said.

What began in Dallas in 1983 with less than 1,000 runners has grown into a 120-race enterprise spread over four continents with a 1.5 million participants.

The Komen Foundation was now a leader in breast cancer fundraising, as well as awareness-raising.

And it's seeing progress. "When we started, the five-year survival rate was 74-percent. Today in America and other industrialized nations, it's 98-percent," Brinker said.

"It's such a personal fight. It's a spirit-filled kind of morning in New York City, a unique day. So we're just here to do the least we could, and that's to show up," said CBS 2HD's Maurice DuBois.

When she was in high school, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn lost her mother to the disease. "We want to be a place where 16-year-old girls don't grow up without their moms."

CBS 2HD's Race For The Cure Special: