As Rico Damota pounds the pavement in the Banff-Jasper relay June 7, he’ll have a dear friend’s mind on his mind.

He’ll dedicate his stage to former Jasperite Myriam Charron, who had a brain tumour removed last October.

The now-recovering, go-getting mother of two wanted to run in the relay, but her doctor advised against it.

Instead, she asked Damota to do it for her.

Team Mimi (a nickname for Charron), which includes local runners Kea Walliser and Patrice Fortin, has raised more than double its initial $10,000 goal.

Relay organizer Blair Shunk said Team Mimi’s total accounts for most of the money raised so far for the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada by the 40 teams running in this year’s edition of the race.

The team never expected such generous support.

“We have a community with a big big heart,” Damota said.

Charron, who moved to Ottawa to return to school in the late 90s, will travel to Jasper to cheer on the runners. 

Damota tears up when thinking about finding out his friend was ill.

“She was very quiet about it,” he said. “She didn’t tell me until two weeks before surgery, when she let me know that for a good part of the prior year she was having regular seizures.”

Started in 1979, the race was suspended in 2000 and then returned in 2005 as a two-section relay of 15 stages that starts simultaneously in Banff and at the North Saskatchewan River crossing.

Jasper runners will round out three teams – Mimi, team See Ya Later captained by Chayne den Outen, and another that will include Shunk and mayor Richard Ireland, who will run the grueling Big Bend, which climbs almost 1,200 feet in 10 km.

The race will finish in Jasper with a celebration Saturday evening at the Activity Centre.