After some gentle persuasion from pixie-bebe and kkchen, I decided to sign up for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: Team in Training program. Our goal is to run the Seattle Marathon at the end of November.

I’ve seen the brochures in various coffee houses over the years, I’ve even picked up the brochures and thumbed through it. I’ve never thought about doing it before because either:
a) I always seem to miss the information sessions
OR
b) I can train for a marathon by myself

This year pixie-bebe and kkchen made sure I didn’t miss an information session. In fact they gave me a lift to the kick off meeting. I thought the kick off meeting may have been a bit too rah! rah! but I guess having more enthusiasm at the beginning is not a bad thing. I know I’ll be needing it towards November.

As for training by myself that’s never quite worked out so well. Why I’m taking this route this year? How is this attempt to finish a marathon going to be any better than my two previous failed attempts? My problem has never been the technical aspects of running. I do a decent job of running within my ability, pacing myself, not over-striding, wearing good shoes, eating well. The part I always fail at is the follow through. September, October, November rolls about…. the days start getting noticeably shorter, the rain starts failing, the weather starts getting colder, the work starts piling up…. and Daniel can no longer pull himself out of bed to keep training.

A piece of advice I was given really early on (which I promptly ignored) was to train with people and not to train by myself. It took awhile for this sink in. It didn’t really connect until I did NaNoWriMo with RL and MN last year, and didn’t do NaNoEdMo by myself this year. Marathons (whether literary or physical) always seem to go easier when you have a friend or two writing/running along side you. The other thing that kkchen pointed out to me was imagine not running the marathon after asking people to donate money. I don’t think my highly developed guilt complex would let me live that down.

My own flippant reasons aside, one of my new year resolutions was to be more charitable. Although fund raising is not exactly in I had in mind, it’s in the right spirit. I don’t say it often but cancer (especially in children) is pretty close to my heart. Leukemia and Lymphoma are common childhood cancers (according to this, Leukemia occurs in 25% of cases and Lymphoma is the third most common childhood cancer). It’s depressing to see children undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The side effects of chemotherapy can be brutal on adults but is much worse on children. Really quite depressing…

Writing this blog entry reminded me of fey. Funny how the aches, pains and gripes of the daily grind don’t seem so bad now…