Training updates and why I run.
Hi everyone,
First off I want to start by thanking everyone who has donated so far. Your help and support have made all the difference in helping provide the motivation I need to keep in this. I'm still quite a ways off from my goal, but I feel confident that I will raise it by the time June 3rd rolls around. For those of you who still want to donate, I can accept donations up until the day of the race but of course the sooner the better so please visit http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/Jcanalin
I also encourage you to tell all your friends, family, co-workers, classmates, clients, doctors, almost anyone about this. You never know who would be willing to donate until you ask. Sometimes certain corporations will do corporate sponsoring, donation or have a matching gifts program. I encourage you to look into your company's Marketing department for such information (as the Chronicle does not offer anything of that sort).
So as far as my running has been going, I have been training for 7 weeks now with the East Bay Run team as a whole and the locally with the mentor group I am part of and I've made such progress in that time. Our very first run on February 3rd, I could barely run a mile, stopping to walk about half of that time. Flash foward to last weekend on the 18th when I ran a 12K (that's 7.5 miles) race from Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge all the way to Aquatic Park by Ghiradelli Square without stopping to walk at all. Coming in at about an hour and a half, I'm about at a brisk 13 minute mile or so hoping that the next 2 months can improve on that even more. In addition, a pleasant side effect that naturally happens is I've lost quite a few inches around the waist so it's nice to fit into things that have long since gone unworn.
In the midst of all my training however I can across an important realization, the reason why I run. It's easy to go into this thinking to yourself, "I'm doing this for my own health and/or personal goals," and it's true, I came into thinking I'm going to do this to lose some weight, feel better about myself and to prove to myself that running 13.1 (and now 26.2 that I've switched to the full) miles is nothing. Everytime I would feel the pain of running and training I'd just remind myself of these reasons. Well sometimes it takes a tragedy to know exactly why you do things.
Every year we have honoree's on our teams. These are people who have been personally effected by Luekemia one way or another and one of our honoree's this year is a woman by the name of Brenda Donato. At 34, in February of 2005 she was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. She received stem cell doners in June of that year and went on to train and compete in a half marathon, full marathon and triatholon. While in remission for a year and training for an Alaska half marathon in June of 2006, she found that the cancer had returned and the stem cell transplat was unsuccessful. She underwent some intensive and high dose chemotherapy that kept her at UCSF for 40 days. She found a bone marrow donor in August of 2006 and after some more chemotherapy she was released in September and began to recover at her home and started to feel healthy again.
Flash foward to just a little over 2 weeks ago. Her body has basically rejected the bone marrow transplant and has affected her lungs so severley that she has gone from 80% lung capacity to about 20%. She has since been released from UCSF and is currently residing in her home. She has been fighting it so hard and to be 100% honest she seems to be fighting a losing battle. One of her doctors who is usually very optomistic about her condition now feels the worst. She is now in a state where she can have absolutely no outside visitors as she has NO immune system. She is not even allowed to talk, or move around unnecessarily basically restricted to lying in bed all day or updating her blog online since it requires minimal movement.
After learning of this I can only imagine what Brenda and her family and friends must be going through. It's a scary thought to me to go through so much pain and try to keep optomistic about the fact that you are slowly dying. And if it's a scary thought for me, someone who doesn't even know her, it must be so much worse for those who are very close to her. Because of this, I've came to the realization that this is why I run. All the pain I go through training and running and how sore I feel afterwards, all that is NOTHING compared to the pain that Brenda has gone through. NOTHING. I run to help to at least help share the pain that her and other people like her affected by Leukemia have gone through. I realized, I don't ask for donations solely because I have to pay for the trip or because I need support from my family, friends and co-workers, I ask for donations so that your money can go to an organization that is helping to achieve a future where there will be no more stories like Brenda. People won't have to go through the pain of going through treatment and living knowing that your life will be cut short. I've come to realize all this and I know I cannot give up and I must train to my fullest.
Well that was certainly a long update and I thank everyone who stuck around to read it all. Once again I want to thank everyone who's gotten this email as your support, help and love have got me this far! Remember, donate early and often!
http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/Jcanalin
First off I want to start by thanking everyone who has donated so far. Your help and support have made all the difference in helping provide the motivation I need to keep in this. I'm still quite a ways off from my goal, but I feel confident that I will raise it by the time June 3rd rolls around. For those of you who still want to donate, I can accept donations up until the day of the race but of course the sooner the better so please visit http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/Jcanalin
I also encourage you to tell all your friends, family, co-workers, classmates, clients, doctors, almost anyone about this. You never know who would be willing to donate until you ask. Sometimes certain corporations will do corporate sponsoring, donation or have a matching gifts program. I encourage you to look into your company's Marketing department for such information (as the Chronicle does not offer anything of that sort).
So as far as my running has been going, I have been training for 7 weeks now with the East Bay Run team as a whole and the locally with the mentor group I am part of and I've made such progress in that time. Our very first run on February 3rd, I could barely run a mile, stopping to walk about half of that time. Flash foward to last weekend on the 18th when I ran a 12K (that's 7.5 miles) race from Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge all the way to Aquatic Park by Ghiradelli Square without stopping to walk at all. Coming in at about an hour and a half, I'm about at a brisk 13 minute mile or so hoping that the next 2 months can improve on that even more. In addition, a pleasant side effect that naturally happens is I've lost quite a few inches around the waist so it's nice to fit into things that have long since gone unworn.
In the midst of all my training however I can across an important realization, the reason why I run. It's easy to go into this thinking to yourself, "I'm doing this for my own health and/or personal goals," and it's true, I came into thinking I'm going to do this to lose some weight, feel better about myself and to prove to myself that running 13.1 (and now 26.2 that I've switched to the full) miles is nothing. Everytime I would feel the pain of running and training I'd just remind myself of these reasons. Well sometimes it takes a tragedy to know exactly why you do things.
Every year we have honoree's on our teams. These are people who have been personally effected by Luekemia one way or another and one of our honoree's this year is a woman by the name of Brenda Donato. At 34, in February of 2005 she was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. She received stem cell doners in June of that year and went on to train and compete in a half marathon, full marathon and triatholon. While in remission for a year and training for an Alaska half marathon in June of 2006, she found that the cancer had returned and the stem cell transplat was unsuccessful. She underwent some intensive and high dose chemotherapy that kept her at UCSF for 40 days. She found a bone marrow donor in August of 2006 and after some more chemotherapy she was released in September and began to recover at her home and started to feel healthy again.
Flash foward to just a little over 2 weeks ago. Her body has basically rejected the bone marrow transplant and has affected her lungs so severley that she has gone from 80% lung capacity to about 20%. She has since been released from UCSF and is currently residing in her home. She has been fighting it so hard and to be 100% honest she seems to be fighting a losing battle. One of her doctors who is usually very optomistic about her condition now feels the worst. She is now in a state where she can have absolutely no outside visitors as she has NO immune system. She is not even allowed to talk, or move around unnecessarily basically restricted to lying in bed all day or updating her blog online since it requires minimal movement.
After learning of this I can only imagine what Brenda and her family and friends must be going through. It's a scary thought to me to go through so much pain and try to keep optomistic about the fact that you are slowly dying. And if it's a scary thought for me, someone who doesn't even know her, it must be so much worse for those who are very close to her. Because of this, I've came to the realization that this is why I run. All the pain I go through training and running and how sore I feel afterwards, all that is NOTHING compared to the pain that Brenda has gone through. NOTHING. I run to help to at least help share the pain that her and other people like her affected by Leukemia have gone through. I realized, I don't ask for donations solely because I have to pay for the trip or because I need support from my family, friends and co-workers, I ask for donations so that your money can go to an organization that is helping to achieve a future where there will be no more stories like Brenda. People won't have to go through the pain of going through treatment and living knowing that your life will be cut short. I've come to realize all this and I know I cannot give up and I must train to my fullest.
Well that was certainly a long update and I thank everyone who stuck around to read it all. Once again I want to thank everyone who's gotten this email as your support, help and love have got me this far! Remember, donate early and often!
http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/Jcanalin