Running down a dream

There's something good
waitin' down this road
I'm pickin' up
whatever's mine - Tom Petty

One of the reasons it's been so quiet around here lately is that I have been running. A lot. I used to be a runner. In my 20's and 30's I ran just about every day. I even ran quite a few 10k races. But something happened. I stopped running. I guess it was a lack of time and energy caused by driving three kids around constantly in my mini-van. I've missed it lately. I walk every day, but it's not the same. When runners would pass me, I'd wonder if I could do it again. With more than 50 candles on my birthday cake, I wasn't sure.

In June, I got a brochure in the mail from Team in Training. It's a fundraising program for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It said, if I joined my local team, they would give me a coach and train me to run the Nike Women's Half-Marathon in October. This was pretty hard to believe, but it got me thinking. I knew people who had blood cancers. They were neighbors of mine.

Dan, the owner of Auburn Running Company, sold me my walking shoes and coached me on how to start running again. He endured two bone marrow transplants and months of chemo. He passed away in June.

Michelle, a friend who lives down the street, had just sent her youngest off to college and was looking forward to life as an empty-nester when she found out she had leukemia. She spent months at Stanford receiving chemo and a transplant. She's back home now and doing very well.
So, I signed up for Team in Training to get back to running, and to honor Dan and Michelle. It was scary at first! I couldn't run for a minute straight without feeling like I was going to die. And I wasn't sure how I was going to raise $2100 dollars. But, I kept plugging away and showing up at my team workouts. I'm proud and happy to tell you that Saturday, I ran 12 miles, and I felt pretty good afterward. And, today I received a check that put me over my fundraising goal.

Thanks to my team, I'm running again and enjoying it (most of the time--I still hate the hills).

Thanks, Brenna, for signing up with me. You've helped keep me motivated and I can't wait to run with you in the race!
Thanks to all of you who have given your support and words of encouragement. It means a lot to me that you believed I could do this. Thanks to all of you that have donated to LLS. I have spoken to so many of you whose lives have been touched by these cancers. I hope my efforts will make a difference for others.

Two weeks to go...