Running can be the most self-centred of sports. You spend a lot of time focused on getting better, setting a personal best, running the race of your life. You design your training program to get you to a level of fitness so you can push your limits. Doesn't matter if you're an elite athlete trying to make the Olympic team, or a weekend warrior, trying to prove something to yourself.

But at the same time, it can be the most giving of sports.

While better than 17,000 athletes were beaten and battered by Boston's blast furnace April 19, $7 million was being raised for charity. Last year, marathons across the U.S. raised $560 million for charity.

In this country, the annual Terry Fox Run has so far raised $340 million for cancer research. That's not counting the dollars that flow from walks/runs in support of breast cancer research.

Millions more for a string of charitable causes come from a portion of entry fees for most races and pledges people collect before they put their bodies through hell.

Groups like Team Diabetes and Joints in Motion (arthritis research) will send you off to a marathon of your choice, if you raise a certain amount of money. They'll help with the training and provide the support you need to accomplish the goal of running a marathon.

And there are the lesser-known causes. People running just to raise awareness. One of them came to my attention last November at the Athens Classic Marathon.

Mark Squirrell is a thirty-something aid worker with the United Nations World Food Programme, based in Jerusalem. He ran Athens wearing a Burkha. Now, I know I had plenty of trouble trying to cope with the heat and hills in shorts and a singlet. I couldn't imagine how he could manage running in that.

Squirrell said he really had no chance to train wearing the Burkha.

"I didn't think it was such a good idea putting it on and running through the streets of Jerusalem. I soon found out it was quite difficult to keep the small mesh part for your eyes actually in front of your eyes. I ran the first two kilometres blind."

Squirrell said it wasn't some mad, passionate desire to try to free the women of Afghanistan from the shackles of their culture and religion that drove him to wear the Burkha.

"I did want to try to make a few people who live and enjoy a free lifestyle to appreciate what they have, make the most of it and actually see in the flesh how others in this world live."

Squirrell's latest athletic adventure is just around the corner. He's captaining a four-member team, which will compete in a three-day outdoor endurance event in East Timor. Team Middle East consists of an Israeli, a Palestinian and two humanitarian aid workers. They have had very little opportunity to train together.

The team will have to run, mountain bike, paddle and swim in order to complete the challenge, which winds up in East Timor's capital, Dili on May 20, in time to celebrate the country's second anniversary. They'll only learn details of the course and exactly what they'll have to do less than a week before the event.

"The team is in a unique position to not only provide a symbol of hope to those caught up in the Middle East crisis, but also reveal how sports can help to break down the barriers that are created by different languages, religion and culture," Squirrell said.

He has no illusions that this effort will have much of an impact on resolving problems in the Middle East. But he does hope it will "raise awareness and some money for those who are quietly suffering from the conflict."

Sometimes just raising awareness can be half the battle. Sort of puts those post-marathon blisters and black toe nails in perspective.

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