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I’m doing WHAT?

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Let it be known that radio advertising does work.

I have heard about this Team in Training thing on the radio before, and finally one day curiosity got to me and I checked out the site. People train for marathons! Travel to foreign lands! Run in foreign lands! Raise money for charity! Wow look at all the excitement and exclamation marks! Next thing you know, I had signed up for an information session. The thing after that, I scribbled my name on a dotted line and gave the organizers $75 to “commit to the group”, checking off proudly that I’d run a marathon.

Oh my, how the exclamation marks lied. First of all, nobody should run a marathon without experience, with just 20 weeks of training – especially going from running NOTHING to 40-something kilometres. I failed to check up on that. Second of all, the exclamation marks made me temporarily insane and forget how much I dreaded the “2K runs” in high school gym class. Trust me, in grade 11 when gym class became optional, my first sigh of joy and relief was dedicated to saying sayonara to that damned trail. What was I thinking??

Well, this series of events all coincided nicely with me turning 25 and having the desperate urge to accomplish something to tell the grandchildren about. The perfect storm.

However, here I am, telling the world (or you and the 3 other readers of this blog): I am training to run a half-marathon on September 27th. My first half-marathon, with bonuses such as “my first 3K”, “my first 4K”, “my first 5K”, “my first 6K”, etc. etc. along the way. You get the idea.

I started training on the Saturday of Victoria Day weekend, and haven’t been talking too much about this whole thing and definitely not doing the fundraising part because I didn’t quite believe I could get very far. I didn’t want to commit. To be honest, I’m still a little commitment-phobic about the whole event. It’s 1K at a time for now, but so far the past two long runs have gone smoothly that I am starting to believe that I might be a pretty good pseudo-runner after all. I am now running 5K in the mornings 3 times a week, plus a long run on the weekend. The last long run I did was 10K (MY FIRST 10K!) and it was so exhilarating and SUCH A RELIEF to me that I could do it…so I’ve decided to share my secret, and start fundraising for the event.

Proceeds from the run will go towards research for blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. It’s one of the cancers that I actually did a lot of research on when I was in high school, for a variety of reasons including a desire to volunteer at hospitals for sick children. I never actually became a volunteer at a hospital, but have always wanted to do something for sick kids ever since. My annual contributions now go to the Sick Kids Hospital Foundation in Toronto, so this is just another way for me to do something for the kids. As a kid who called hospitals her second home and IVs her supplements, there’s just something about diseases and children that breaks my heart.

If you’d like to contribute to the cause and sponsor me in my run, you can check out the link here. Thanks in advance!

{ 5 comments… add one }
  • VancityAllie Thursday 9 July 2009, 19:55

    Holy crap! Congrats dude.

    I honestly couldn’t do that. Ever. Never never never. I hate running.

    But hey, kudos to you ;) You can do it! I’ll sponsor you!

  • Jeanne Monday 13 July 2009, 09:46

    I look forward to Unravelling with you!

  • Alexis Monday 13 July 2009, 11:23

    Hello fellow Unraveller! Glad to meet you!

  • Nic Monday 13 July 2009, 11:56

    Hi there, I’m also doing unravelling – thought I would say hello. Good luck with the running. I am very slowly trying to become ‘a runner’ after years of doing very little sport in school and then years of doing even less after school! It’s a slow process, and I’m not quite ready to be thinking about distances yet but you have made it sound a bit more achievable.

  • emvandee Wednesday 15 July 2009, 02:22

    OMG congrats/whatwereyouthinking?! Good luck, and maybe start carbo-loading now :)

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