I love being a member of the NF Endurance Team and have just had my first post published on the team blog at the Children’s Tumor Foundation website. It’s about my running journey and my latest event. Here’s how it begins:
I didn’t imagine when I ran my first half marathon with NF Endurance in October 2008 that I’d be running my third on the other side of the country in 2010, or that I’d register for my fourth while my calves were still tight. Yet, here I am whittling down my times and racking up donations for a great cause!
I’m a Jersey Shore native, but my family and I had been living in Southern California when my son Michael, a friend and I signed up for Long Beach in 2008. Four days after we registered, my other son and NF hero, Gabriel, died tragically and unexpectedly. Despite the rawness of our grief, we decided to honor his memory by keeping our commitment to the team. There was little thought to race times, but we did raise more than $2,600 and had a wonderful, poignant day.
My family and I then moved home to central New Jersey and I ran the New York City Half Marathon with a tiny NF Endurance team in the blistering August heat of 2009. That too was an emotional, glorious race that finished yards from the World Trade Center site, and I raised another $1,220.
I knew my next event would have to be on my sandy home turf at the Jersey Shore. I was nervous about the April 17, 2010 date though, because the April weather here is generally miserable and I’ve never been a bad weather runner. My nightmare scenario was running on the boardwalk for 13.1 miles with icy, rainy wind blowing off the Atlantic and into my face. Long before April rolled around, I was contending with blizzards and torrential downpours. …
You can read the rest here, and while you’re at it, consider a small donation. Any size will do.
