Wednesday, April 15, 2009

26.2 miles? I can't even walk down the stairs ...

Well, it's official, 3 days ago I was falling down the stairs in the snow on Easter morning and as of tonight, I'm a member of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training and am running the Denver Marathon on October 18. Eeek!! That officially 6 months and 3 days away ... 186 days away ... 4464 hours away. Eeek!! I have to go from running, um, not at all, to 26.2 miles. Eeek!! Be prepared to read that word a few more times over the next 4464 hours!!

So, the truth of the story is, I have wanted to run a marathon for a while, which is odd since I have never been a runner. Maybe it's because I wasn't able to run for so many years because of my knee and I'm finally able to - or so I hope. We're going to find out on October 18th. And the other reason I'm doing this is that one of my best friends and favorite people in the world, my Aunt Goofy, died in July 2006 from lymphoma, so this is the perfect way for me to honor her one more time because words can't express how much she means to me. Every time I want to give up or every time my body hurts, I just have to think of every thing she went through in her entire fight because nothing I'm going to feel is going to come close to the pain she went thought. Sure, that can't change anything at all or bring her back but hopefully, this will be an experience that will allow me to educate more people about leukemia and lymphoma and to raise money so that the amazing researchers can hope to find a cure so that more people don't have to go through this terrible disease.

I'm sure the few of you that are actually reading this are wondering why I'm writing. Cara told me I had to :) And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how funny the next 6 months and 3 days could possibly be as I train for a marathon. Since all of you know that I'm hardly the runner, I'm going to have plenty of great stories for you that I going to want to share so why not do it here. Who knows how much I'll write or how funny they're even going to be because honestly, I'm not really as funny as I think I am, but it could still be fun. Plus, maybe if people realize how ridiculous and hard this is going to be for me, or maybe how much fun I'm having, then maybe you'll want to donate more money! :) Did you really think I wasn't going to throw that in there somewhere .. the link to donate will be posted sooner or later.

I don't want to wear you out with my rambling from the start so I'll finish up with a little bit of photographic proof that it's going to be a long road ... the scratches on my shin from falling down the stairs on Sunday :) 26.2 miles ... bring it on!