Events included a 400m limited mobility (one circuit of the North Park Athletic track), a four kilometre walk and run and an eight kilometre run.

The course will go through the iron barks after beginning at the North Park club rooms.

Northern Grampians Shire Councillor Karen Hyslop said she always made an effort to support the annual event.

“It is a good way to bring the family together,” she said.

“I always attend with my daughter and mother and it is a really nice outing.

“It is also women coming together to support the National Breast Cancer Foundation which is important.”

The Mother’s Day Classic has raised $30 million for the National Breast Cancer Foundation in the past 20 years, all of which was donated towards breast cancer research.

Mother’s Day Classic chief executive Sharon Morris said only ten per cent of research projects received government funding, which was why a community fundraising event such as the Mother’s Day Classic was so important.

​“Australia has some of the best medical researchers in the world, thanks to the work of researchers and National Breast Cancer Foundation do, we’re in a much stronger position than we were when MDC first started,” she said.

“The five-year survival rate for someone with breast cancer is now 90 per cent, research has directly led to improvements in prevention, early diagnosis and treatments.

“For those with advanced cancer the survival rate is only 22 per cent – so we need to fund more research in this space.”

Ms Morris said women in regional areas were often faced with very different challenges when it came to being treated for breast cancer. 

“Some of the research projects funded by MDC over the past 20 years have dealt specifically with this,” she said. You can register online at www.mothersdayclassic.com.au or at Stawell Library.