Sarah A. Miller | For AnnArbor.com

Maria Shimones stood in the north end zone of Michigan Stadium, wearing a cow suit and posing for pictures with children. The bovine-clad Shimones, a student at Saline High School, had other costumed friends too—a gorilla, a tiger, a bear—all of them there to spread cheer for the Big House Big Heart charity races.

The dark gray clouds that draped the Huron Valley on Saturday had rolled away, and the event’s more than 12,000 participants ran under inviting blue skies on Sunday morning.

Event organizer Andrea Highfield said that as of race time, roughly $638,000 had been raised for more than 140 charities, putting the event well on its way to raising the $750,000 that organizers had set as their goal.

The event featured races of 10K, 5K and one mile, all of which finished at Michigan Stadium’s 50-yard line.

Participants came with their friends and families and coworkers, many of them pushing strollers or wheelchairs.

Brenda Svetkovich, 55, of Ann Arbor, crossed the finish line alongside her sister Marcia Ivey, who trekked to Ann Arbor from Chillicothe, Ohio, to complete a one-mile walk. The two were helping to raise funds for The John R. Crosby Memorial Foundation, which provides support to children with cancer and their families.

Svetkovich does jazzercise with John Crosby’s mother, who lost her son to cancer when he was eight years old. Friends in the Ann Arbor community had helped Svetkovich through hard times earlier in her life, and she wanted to return the favor.

“In 1999, my husband passed away from colon cancer,” Svetkovich said. “Two months later, I found out I had breast cancer, and then I moved (to Ann Arbor) and found out I had breast cancer again. And everybody was so supportive, all my friends at jazzercise. Svetkovich knows first-hand the importance of having those support systems.

“When it’s really the darkest days,” she said, “and you can’t find an answer for anything, someone calls you up and tells you they love you, or you go to jazzercise, or you look outside and someone is bringing your trash cans in for you from the street.

“You can’t tell someone how much that means when you can’t hardly get out of bed.”

The Big House Big Heart race, now in its fourth year, has been growing steadily larger. It expanded by roughly 2,000 participants since last year, and many participants were pledging to come back next year, and to bring more people with them.

“That’s what happens,” said Highfield of the grassroots outreach efforts. “Somebody does (the race) and they think, ‘who else would like to do this, or I’d like to do it with my family.’ ”

So the word spreads, and cow suits make folks smile.

Bison Collins Messink covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at bisonmessink@annarbor.com