It's Official

I recieved the word thsi morning from the Leukemia and Lympoma Society that I have been accepted into the Team in Training program and have my spot for running the Boston Marathon in 2012.   It just so happened that I was at PR Running getting a fitting done for some new running shoes when the call came.  The staff at PR Running is fantastic and they really helped me to understand what they were looking for and how the right shoes will help.  I didn't really need to be sold on the concept of getting custom fit, as I know how very important it is with my golf game so it has to be similar here.  I ended up with a great new pair of Brooks Glycerine 9's that I'm psyched to break in tomorrow morning. 

Now comes the hard part, which will be raising the funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I'm working on getting the fundraising page set up and should be launching that along with this blog to the public in the next day or so.   I'm very excited to be raising money for such a great cause and am looking forward to having a lot of fun over the next five or six months.

Long Run Day

Yesterday was my long run day.  I've finally broken double digits and hit 10 miles yesterday.  When I started this process 5 weeks ago my first "long" run was 6 miles and I've been adding approximately a mile a week to my long runs.  I've then been supplementing those long runs with 2-4 mile maintenance runs 2-3 times a week.

After this weeks long run, I think I'm going to have a slow recovery week this week, probably only doing 2 days of maintenance runs to let my body recover a little.  I felt pretty sore this morning but after a shower and some play time with my boys I'm feeling much better.   This week I'm planning on heading over to a local running store in Westboro to have them look at the running and casual shows I've been wearing and get some feedback on new shoes and anything I can do to prevent any of these little nagging injuries that will be with me through the process.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the LLS hopefully at the beginning of the week so I can get the fundraising part of this journey under way to go with the training. We'll see what this week brings, either way I have had a nice Thanksgiving weekend with my healthy happy family and feel so very lucky to be in such a great place with my life right now.

Thanksgiving

Just got back from a fantastic meal at Amy's Aunt and Uncles house for Thanksgiving.  Sitting on the living room couch on the computer while Amy and Jack are curled up watching Peanuts on TV.  It's a neat little tradition she's had with him.

A day like today is good to help force you to stop and think about all of the great things in your life and it helps tie into why I'm starting out on this endeavor.   One of the interesting things that happened over the last couple days was in filling out the application for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society one for the things that was asked is why are you choosing their organization to raise funds for to run in the marathon.  And as I sit and think about it today, this sort of started out as a way for me to check an event off the bucket list for my own selfish reasons and has now turned into something completely different. 

This morning before we went up to Wilmington to gather with the family, the four of us were just hanging out and spending time together.  Fortunately I was able to sit back through it all a realize how truly lucky I really am to have such happy and healthy boys in my life.  And to top it off to see how they interact with Amy and how great of a Mom she is to my boys really is just an amazing thing.  To see Brady and Jack running around the house this morning causing mayhem was really something special.   Their health and happiness is truly a blessing.

That coupled with the fact that this was the first major holiday that we all have gotten together since Amy's grandfather passed away from Leukemia earlier in the year really helps to bring all of this "stuff" together and make it fit into this perfect little puzzle in my life right now.

The fact that I don't have to spend my holiday at children's hospital making one of my boys with their cue ball head feel better from the every day battle of cancer is a blessing that I need to remind myself of every day when things seems to be bringing me down.  And now this running thing really seems like it should be relatively easy if I really keep this all in perspective.

So as I await my final approval from the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society to start my fundraising, it's with that gratefulness and hope that I can raise a few bucks so that I can hopefully help another dad out there who isn't as lucky as me can have a happy ending and enjoy a Thanksgiving with his kids like I did today.

The Start

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I'm starting this blog today to chart my progress and help me to remember what I am doing and why.   The story starts about 5 weeks ago when Tom Flanagan, an attorney friend of mine, suggested that I run in the Hampton Beach half marathon with him in February of next year.  After jokingly saying sure, I thought about it and then started to take it a bit more seriously.  I had been going to the gym for since about May of this year trying to get back into some decent shape more for golf than anything else.   This just seemed like something to train for and work toward over the winter off season.  About four weeks ago I did my first 6 mile run, where I really worked on pacing myself and completing it without walking.  Since I have been slowly working up adding about a mile per week, running a long run on Saturday or Sunday and doing 2 or 3 weekly maintenance runs of 2-4 miles.  This last weekend I finished 9 miles feeling pretty good. Which brings me to this week.    

I have always in some way always thought about running the Boston Marathon.   It is sort of on my bucket list.   At this point if I keep adding a mile or so a week, I’ll be well past the 13.1 I’ll need for the February half marathon, so my thinking is that why not just keep on training through the winter and have myself ready to run 26.2.  So with that in mind I started to do some research about getting into the Boston Marathon. 

After looking around, you practically have to be half Kenyan just to qualify, doing a qualifying marathon in under 3:15 to qualify.  At this point my goal would be to finish in under 4 hours.   The only other route to go would be to get a guaranteed spot offered to about 25 charities that you have to raise 4k for to get your spot.   Looking a little further it made even a little more sense in that I could run this marathon, scratch this weird itch that I’ve had for some reason, and raise some money for a great cause at the same time, seems to make sense at this point in my life.

I contacted Jill Perriera from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for a couple reasons.  I know that they are a reputable association from other friends doing fun raising for them as well as the fact that Amy’s grandfather whom she was very close with passed away earlier this year from Leukemia  and it would be nice to run in honor of a great man who helped shape my wife into the fantastic woman and mom that she is today.   I submitted my application yesterday and am awaiting a response from them probably beginning of next week at this point with the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow and the long weekend.

All if this stuff coming together over the last week or so and with some of the other events going on at the same time have brought me to an interesting and I feel like a changing point in my life.  At this point, I’ve only told Amy and my secretary Peggy that I’m planning on doing it and they both think I’m pretty much nuts.  Before I submitted the application to Leukemia and Lymphoma Society  I asked Amy if she thought I was biting off more than I could chew and she said, “ya, but that’s what we do”. 

It’s led me over the last day or so to contemplate where I am in my life and why on earth I’m doing this.  I’ve never been a runner, in fact I sort of don’t like it.  What I like about it is the time for myself and the sense of me against the road.  I guess I’ll have to get into that next time.