Another Year, Another Marathon

Another year, another marathon.  This, of course, means one more thing for me – another fundraiser.  I hate writing those words because I always feel like just another 2-bit, online beggar trying to lift some cash out of the reader’s pockets.  Each year I do this is more difficult than the year before – because how long can you go on asking your friends for money until they roll their eyes and say, “Enough already”?

But the problem is, it’s not enough.  No matter how much money I seem to raise, cancer is still there and it still sucks.  It sucked years ago, when I never got the chance to meet my first girlfriend’s mother because she died of throat cancer just before we met.  It sucked when my former mother-in-law battled breast cancer, even though she beat it.  It sucks when I don’t see my friend Michele posting her normal happy-things on facebook for weeks and I know it’s because she’s busy fighting it.  It sucked when my grandfather died from it.

But it especially sucks when it affects children.  In the past, I have always raised money in the name of a neighbor of mine, Brielle LaPlante, who was taken from us at the age of 13 and whose parents have raised over $1million for cancer research.  During my first marathon, thoughts of Brielle's strength helped get me through those rough final few miles as I listened to her favorite song, "Not Afraid" by Eminem.  Last year, a former high school classmate of mine lost his eight year-old son to brain cancer after a 9-month battle fighting it with everything he had.  And more recently a local boy whom my daughter and I went trick-or-treating with this past Halloween was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor and is now fighting for his life.

It's just not fair.

The American Cancer Society is an incredible charity that fights cancer by funding research, treatments and patient care.  I am reminded how amazing this organization is every time I attend a pre-race dinner and hold back the tears listening to the stories of people like Michele Brodtman or Nora McInerny Purmort.  I cannot think of a better way to make training for an event like a marathon be more incredible than by putting on my DetermiNation running shirt and supporting such a noble cause.  I hope you will join me by clicking here to access my fundraising page and donating.  Every little bit helps.  Thank you so much for your generosity - I am truly moved by each and every donation.

The NYC Half

“Can you tell me where the Apple Store is?” a man asked as I exited a cab way too early in the morning on a Sunday.

“Umm… it’s right in front of you,” I answered, pointing to the large glass case with the Apple logo emblazoned on the front.  I was going there, too, so I led the man to the door where he finally realized how silly his question was.  In fairness, it doesn’t look like a store.  It looks more like an overblown advertisement.  We descended the spiral staircase to an underground vault – the Apple Store, currently posing as a haven for runners waiting out the cold before the United NYC Half Marathon.

The Apple Store - NY, NY

This was the meeting area for my fellow DetermiNation teammates, and we alone occupied about half the store.  “Did you guys open the store just for us?” I asked an employee, figuring sometimes companies do nice things for charitable reasons and the good publicity.  “No,” he said.  “We’re open 24/7.”  Oh, the things I miss about New York.  Where else can you drop your phone in your beer at 3AM and get an immediate replacement?

Do I Have the Wrong OCD for Running?

The sport of running is ripe for those of us with OCD tendencies.  One of the wonderful things about running is that it is quantifiable in so many ways – miles, pace, time, speed, calories burned, hill incline, you name it.  When I’m healthy and in good training form, I’ll even create spreadsheets to analyze and track all of this data.  Sometimes I can’t wait to get off the treadmill and get to my computer to type in the miles and my pace to see how it stacks up to previous runs.

That is my OCD – speed and distance, one run at a time.  I constantly want to run longer and faster than I did the day before.  Unfortunately, this may have also led to my downfall.

Starting this past January, I went to the gym every day at lunch for a 40-minute treadmill run, which conveniently put me right around the 4-mile mark as I finished.  So I would run 4 miles, record the time and enter it in my spreadsheet to compare it to my previous record.  Essentially, recording my runs every day made me want to race myself every day.  Even before getting to the gym, I would plot my treadmill pace – from my starting point through all of the subsequent faster intervals so that I could run just a little bit faster than I did the day before.  Some days I would be forced to slow down or give up early.  But on most days, I’d eek out a new record by a few seconds and be proud of my hard work.

And maybe that’s where I went wrong.