"The little I do out there is nothing compared to the suffering they're going through," Curwen said.
Shawn is a proud member of club Determination, a group of athletes who run to raise money for the American Cancer Society. The group has raised almost $2 million in just two years.
"It's a really really great way to raise money and pair it with something like this, where people are running out there," the American Cancer Society's Sarah Coulan said.
But the Father's Day race actually isn't about fundraising. It's a chance to raise awareness about prostate cancer, which killed more than 27,000 men in 2009, but is preventable.
So after the race, runners stood in an endless line for free cancer screenings, courtesy of Hackensack University Medical Center.
Nicholas Renvoize considers it a Father's Day present to his 3-month-old son.
"I wasn't really paying too much attention before, but I've got a newborn now," he said. "So i've got to do different things, and this is one of them."
As for the race, 23-year-old Kumsa Adugna Megersa took top honors with a time of 23:48. Twenty-nine-year-old Ketema Nigusse finished second in 23:57. On the women's side, 48-year-old Yumi Ogita finished first in 31:30. Angela Giuliani, 27, was the only other female to crack the top 200, finishing in 31:51.
As many as 5,000 people participated in the annual Father's Day runm an event organizers say will quite literally save lives.
