Running for a Reason

I spent this weekend in Nashville running the Country Music Half Marathon with Team in Training. With your help, I raised over $3,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and ran 13.1 miles in less than 2 hours…and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure which accomplishment I’m more proud of! But to tell you the truth, before this week, I hadn’t fully made the connection between the fundraising I was doing and the training. To be sure, I spent a lot of time thinking about Lynn and my dad and others who have lost their lives to cancer while I was logging the miles, but it was hard for me to wrap my head around how the actual training fit in with my fundraising. I suppose I could make more sense of it if I was raising money by promising to do something horrible like…I don’t know, give up ice cream for a month, but running…well, bizarre as it may be, I really like to run. Love it in fact. The way it makes my less than perfect body feel strong and powerful. The way it clears my crazy head. I mean, it’s not like I jump out of bed every morning just dying to lace up my running shoes, but for the most part, I really enjoy it. So asking people for donations by promising to do something I love, well, it didn’t seem quite fair.

But last weekend it started to make sense. On our last day of training as a team, my team member, Mallory, shared a story about her own battle with leukemia. She told us about an afternoon during the course of her chemo when she tried to climb the stairs in her house and discovered that she couldn’t. She was sixteen years old at the time and didn’t have the strength to climb a single flight of stairs. Her eyes filled with tears as she told the story but then quickly cleared as she looked at each of us and said, “I’m running this race because I can. Because there was a time when I couldn’t climb the stairs, and now I’m ready to run 13.1 miles with all of you. I’m running because I can.”

Suddenly it clicked for me. Running the half marathon wasn’t just a fundraising device, a reason to ask people for money, but the race itself was a way to honor those who have battled cancer. Those who have fought blood cancer and won like Mallory and those who have not been so lucky, like Lynn. I would run in celebration of the fact that Mallory is here to run with me today and in protest of the fact that Lynn – and so many others – are not here at all. I would also run with a renewed awareness and thankfulness that so far in this life, my greatest physical challenge has been the one I’ve imposed on myself.

I met that challenge Saturday morning. In 80 degree weather, I ran 13.1 miles in 1 hour and 57 minutes flat.

I spent a lot of that time thinking about Lynn. About the stories she told, the way she laughed, the way she could make my mom laugh so hard that I worried she might wet her pants. I thought about Lynn’s rules about double dipping and sharing ice cream cones; I thought about the way she’d matter of factly say “perk up" to pull you out of a bad mood. I thought about how much she loved teapots and Meg Ryan movies and McDonald's Diet Coke. I thought about the many holidays my family spent with hers, the countless plays and performances of both mine and my sister’s that she attended with her whole family in tow. I thought about the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings. No milestone went unmarked by Lynn (and the marking usually involved cake!). I thought about those last weeks, when the myeloma fully took over – how hard she fought, how much she suffered. I thought about the many friends and family she left behind - those who miss her, love her, need her still…

I won’t lie; I also spent much of that hour and fifty seven minutes checking my watch and wondering how much longer I could keep up my pace in the sweltering heat, but the time I spent thinking about Lynn…well, it made me finally realize what running for a reason means. And now, I can honestly say that running is no longer just about burning calories and fitting into my favorite jeans. It’s a celebration; it's a protest; it's a prayer of gratitude.

So thank you for supporting me on this journey…from your generous donations, to your questions about how my training was going, to your calls and text messages and emails of support. Thank you. Thank you for supporting me, and thank you for supporting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.