Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Being part of something bigger

I hope you all stop over to enter Jill's giveaway @ Two Yellow Birds Decor. There are new giveaways each day until Wednesday.


As for my acutal post, today I want to share something from another realm of my life- running. Saturday morning I got up at 7:30am to do something very different. Not sure whether I have mentioned this previously, but on Christmas day 2012, a girl who graduated High School with my husband and I back in 2003 was diagnosed with Leukemia.

At first I definitely felt a sadness for her and her family, but this seemed to grow as the days went on and I really thought about it I wanted to do something more. One day about a week or so ago, one of those little ads popped up on one of the websites I was visiting. It looked a little something like this


As soon as I saw this, I knew I absolutely needed to figure out how to be a part of this. And dedicate the training and actual run to my classmate. I clicked on the link to find more information and saw they were having info meetings but they were all while I was still at work in the evenings. I didn't let that stop me because they actually had a conference call in the evening one night which, even though I'd be at work, I could step away for a few minutes to listen and get questions answered. As luck would have it, I actually got a call before this point and spoke with someone this past Monday. I just knew I had to get involed. Needless to say, Thursday evening I signed up and was immediately so excited! I knew this was going to be a great experience.

Friday evening I recieved an email from my local area running team coach about the training run Saturday morning at HACC wildwood center which is about 15 minutes away. Oddly, when  I looked at the calendar for Saturday, the mileage listed was 1-1.5 miles. I as pretty stinkin bummed. SERIOUSLY! I run usually no less than 3 miles regardless so I figured that if this was the distance, I would stay after and run more on my own.

Much to my heart's happiness, when I arrived, the coach asked me a little about my running and informed me that the emailed training assumes someone who doesn't regularly run. When I told him that last weekend I ran 8 miles on Sunday he made a statement to the effect of "Yea, you are a runner... you look like a runner." Since this isn't my running blog,I won't go all crazy on what this statement meant for me.. just know that it made my heart smile. So anyway, that being said he told me that most of the people joining the group Saturday were those training for the half marathon in March. The first portion of running would be 5 miles and that if I wanted, I could join  them for the other 4 miles. I laughed, but ended up running the whole 9 miles!!

I now know that my next step will be the Hershey half in the fall and then hopefully next spring I can do the half with Team In Training. I will be running for my classmate in this 10k and for all others following.

Why am I sharing this with you, you might ask? Well part of this committment is raising funds for research for treatments and an eventual CURE for Leukemia/Lymphoma. I am so excited to be part of this experience and would like to ask my followers (and theirs)to consider donating to this cause. Every little bit counts and even if you can only donate $5 or $10 please know that this would be hugely appreciated on my end and is going to such a wonderful organization. Please take a moment to donate at my page here and know that it is so appreciated- both for your support of my involvement and also for finding a cure for cancer.

If you would like to follow along more on my journey toward this event in April as well as day to day fitness- please add me on GFC at my other blog The runner in me.

I also welcome you to follow along with her in My journey to beat Leukemia where she documents each day of her journey to kick cancer's BUTT!!

Thanks for listening and for your consideration in donating to this cause.

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