Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Mom and Dad  : )

Greg, Cherie, and Jonathan 

DFMC 2011 - Here I come!

Merry Christmas!!  : )  It has been a whirlwind week, and part of me still can't believe that it's Christmas morning.  This past weekend I took the first part of my state certification testing for my EMT-B license, which was the practical exam.  For the exam, there are several 'stations' each of which presents a different scenario (for example, an unresponsive/not breathing patient in need of CPR/AED, a broken wrist that needs splinting, etc.).  The first station that I got assigned to was a victim with a broken femur (that huge bone in your thigh).  As I stood before the two state examiners mentally rehearsing all the little known facts that I knew about broken femurs, I gave them the nod and began verbalizing the steps I needed to take.  But after the first step I had one small problem - my mind suddenly went completely blank and I totally forgot what Step 2 was.  My mind was racing and I decided that I couldn't just stand there staring blankly so I knelt by our 'patient' and began to examine the arm for a radial pulse, sensation, and motor function.  The arm.  I was examining the arm of a patient with a broken femur.  Why I thought that was a good thing to do, I'm not sure!  But as soon as I finished looking at the arm my brain cleared and I remembered all the remaining steps with ease.  My partner told me that the look on my face when I realized what I was doing was priceless.  After that small bout with nerves, I managed to go through the rest of the stations without any hiccups and - although they don't explicitly tell you - I think I passed!  An early Christmas present to be sure.

The rest of the week flew by, beginning with my trip to NYC to see The Tree in Rockefeller Square and many other Christmas sights.  Next came the Hendrickson Christmas celebration - always a highlight.  We draw names at Thanksgiving so each person buys for one other person, and this year baby Connor had me.  He (slash Kevin and Emma, his parents) did an awesome job and gave me some new winter running clothes - I've already put them to good use!  Then yesterday on Christmas Eve my family was all together for the day  : )  including my little nephew Nathan.  My parents went along with the running theme and I am now the owner of a Garmin GPS running watch - pretty sweet!!  I'm excited to put it to use...after I figure out how to use it of course.

All in all it's been a great week, and a reminder of how lucky I am to be surrounded by such great family and friends.  A popular status on FB lately has been, The average person has 1000 wishes, but a cancer patient only has one: to get well.  This Christmas I hope you'll join me in helping to bring that wish to reality for many patients by donating to the DFMC team.  Click Here to visit my fundraising page and donate!

Thank you, and have a very Merry Christmas!!

One week down, lots to go

After my first week of official marathon training, I'm still alive and kicking!  : )  Ok so it wasn't all too strenuous of a week.  I had a few runs, being 3 and 4 miles long they only scratched the surface of what's to come.  But nonetheless, I kept all my average mile splits under 10:00 without having to push myself too hard.  Hey...for me, that's a pretty good start!  I picked up a friend to run with...one of my Blades teammates will be joining me for the 26.2 miles come April 18th.  She'll be a 'bandit' and I'm very excited to have her along for the training journey / marathon experience!  We sat down together to go over the marathon training plan provided by Dana Farber / Jack Fultz, our training advisor, and settled on moving the weekly calendar ahead by one day so our 'long' runs each week will fall on Friday rather than Saturday.  Since our hockey games are played on Saturday and Sunday, we decided that running 15 miles before a hockey game in February might not be our best bet!  Needless to say I've been excited to get back into a daily routine.  Also, my fundraising letters have been finished, printed, and are in the process of being stamped/signed/addressed/sent out the door!  Just in time for Christmas  : )  I hope you'll consider making a donation in support of the DFMC team - there's no better gift than changing the life of someone else in need.

And so it begins...cold weather running

I came to two conclusions when I headed out for a 6 mile run on Wednesday evening.  The first conclusion was that it has indeed begun - those months of the year when as soon as I step outside to begin my jog my face starts to tingle at the cold.  On Wednesday night in Somerville, according to weather.com it was 29 degrees, but felt like 17.  Coldddd!  I have to say that once I start going I warm up for the most part - minus my face which is the only thing exposed to the cold air.  It's an interesting paradox - but needless to say, if you see someone dressed entirely in black with reflectors on and a ghost white face running around the Somerville/Medford area at night - it's probably me!  My second conclusion was that it is not easy to write a blog about running.  Since I have plenty of time to think during my runs, I decided that I'd get ahead of the game and brainstorm what I was going to blog about.  But my next thought was...ok, what do I write?  I ran by a white house...then a blue one...and THEN, I ran over a bridge.  It's not all that thrilling, except for when I happen to see odd occurrences - like when a car tried to pull a u-turn on Broadway but was going entirely too fast and drove straight into the curb on the other side of the street.  (True story)  Or, last year when I was running during the day in Boxford by my parents house...and if you know Boxford, it's a super small town with lots of woods and animals...and while I was jogging along I saw a rooster hanging out by the side of the road.  Not an uncommon sight for me, so I ignored it and jogged by - only to glance back and find it bobbing it's head and running after me.  So I suppose there are a few such entertaining stories that I typically find hilarious - and those are what would make a 'running' blog interesting.

Anyway, Monday begins my official training schedule!  More updates on that to come..

A List of Thanks for Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  My day started early this morning as I was up helping my mom to prepare the big bird.  Since she had foot surgery about a month ago, I volunteered to assist the food preparation for the day.  Little did I know what I was in for!  It's not so easy to whip up my mother's homemade stuffing and get the turkey all ready to go...but several hours later I feel much more domestically experienced.  After we had most of the food ready and had a break in the preparation phase then I headed out for a quick run.  During this 'pre-training' month before my strict running schedule begins I've been running a couple times a week, usually around 4 or 4.5 miles.  I'm a pretty slow runner (not my forte) so my miles have averaged around 10:00 or 10:15.  Today I decided on a shorter run - 3.48 miles to be exact, but I think that the thought of our big turkey dinner kicked up my pace a bit because my splits were about 9:30  : )  Last year I ended up with a finishing time of 5:56.30 for the marathon - far slower than I had been aiming for after I had battled stomach issues for several miles.  This year I'm just hoping to improve on that, and maybe aiming towards a 10:00 average split.  Of course, we'll see how the training goes once that begins in earnest!

I'm also hoping to finish up my fundraising letters this weekend - yes, I've been procrastinating.  I sat down to draft my letter a few days ago and was trying to figure out how to fit last year's experience, a background on Dana Farber, why I'm running, and a whole lot of other things into a one-page letter with font big enough to read.  Now that's a challenge!  But I guess that's also why I'm keeping a blog.  I can tackle one topic per blog post and hopefully finish before Marathon day!

So the big question - and the one I usually get asked most often.  Why would you choose to run 26.2 miles??  My answer usually begins with me explaining that I'm not much of a runner.  I know, I'm running a marathon - but running has never been my thing.  Usually when we'd be having conditioning sprints/runs on the turf at Providence I'd be the one that everyone loved having in their line.  Not because I was fast - actually just the opposite, I'd be slower than most other teammates and so whoever else was in my line got more rest waiting for me to finish  : )  So why a marathon?  I guess it's because I'm not a good runner.  Since I struggle (an understatement) through my training both physically and mentally, I feel as if I can gain some sort of understanding in a very very small way of the struggle that people experience in the fight against cancer.  It's a humbling experience to attempt something so out of my own comfort zone.  In addition, I had two aunts who were treated at Dana Farber - both were battling breast cancer.  One of them passed away a few years ago, leaving behind a son who I'm enjoying getting to watch grow up living nearby with my aunt and uncle's family.  The second aunt was treated successfully and I'm so excited to say is now cancer-free.  These are just two of the many other family members, friends, and friends of friends who inspire me to put on my running shoes and train.  It's pretty amazing that by taking on a relatively low-risk athletic feat such as running a marathon, I can raise a large amount of awareness and support for the cancer cause.  If all I have to do is sacrifice some free time each week to run in order to make that happen - it's an easy choice.  So I'm not just running for my two aunts, I'm also running for each of those people who donated in honor of someone.  I'm running for a cure to a disease that affects 1 out of every 3 people.  And that marathon?  A piece of cake compared to the fight of a cancer patient and their family.  Anyway, that's my lecture for today - Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Day 1 of whipping myself back into shape...

Happy Monday everyone!!  : )  Since I've finally had a free moment to update on my first day of the 'pre-training plan' training (yep, figure that one out) and it's 9:30pm at night I think that says a lot about my day!  I was up bright and early to head to work - I'm in the Distribution Center for Christian Book Distributors (I know, shameless plug) and Mondays are always the busiest days for processing orders.  Suffice it to say my feet were a bit sore at the end of the day.  I headed right home to have a quick dinner with my mom before hopping back in my car to drive to hockey practice.  I'm playing for the Boston Blades of the CWHL (another shameless plug - go bladesssssssssss!) and am having a great time playing.  For those of you hockey fans - come check out a game.  Not so much to see me...I mean, I'm sure if you look close enough you'll be able to spot me on the bench : )  But, I have the thrill of playing with some of the top women's hockey players in the world!  It's pretty surreal playing with women who I watched on TV - so, if you have the hockey itch then come check us out.  Anyway...back to the true subject of this update.  I decided that my hour plus of hockey practice could count as my first day of training.  I'm planning on hitting the road tomorrow for a solid run and sitting down to plan out my real training schedule within the next couple days.  I'm also in the midst of writing my fundraising appeal letters...so, be on the lookout for those in a few weeks!  : )

I'm back!!

Yes, that's right - I'm officially back with the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge team for round 2 of the Boston Marathon!  For those of you who tracked me last year, I had a site on Shutterfly but decided to switch over to blogspot in hopes of motivating myself to make updating and chronicling the next few months a more regular habit  : )  Also, there are several of my DFMC teammates who have blogs, so be sure to check them out as well!  I'm hoping to familiarize myself with the site so in theory I'll have links to their pages on here within a few days.  But before I go too much farther - a quick review of last year running with DFMC.

I first found out about the DFMC program because a friend of mine had run for them two years ago, and from the moment I found out about it I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of.  I've been a hockey player since pretty much birth - and running has never come naturally to me.  But there was something about the challenge of running a marathon that intrigued me.  Combine that with the cause of running for Dana Farber, one of the premier cancer institutes in the world, and I was sold.

Months after making that decision to run my perspective had changed.  I was always excited about raising money for Dana Farber - two of my aunts had been treated there, along with many other friends and friends of friends.  I had always known it was a great cause - but it was sometime during Marathon weekend when I truly realized what the DFMC team meant to each of the former or current cancer patient.  Perhaps it was during the DFMC pasta dinner, when many Jimmy Fund patients stood onstage with glowing smiles - most of these patients were in remission, some were not.  All had hope.  Perhaps it was when I stood in the DFMC refuge along with all the other DFMC runners, each with their own reasons for running.  Or maybe it was at 5am that morning, when I pulled on my singlet that had the names and initials of family and friends who had battled/were battling cancer.  I'm not really sure - but what I am sure of it that when I was halfway through the marathon and began to have stomach problems I knew that I couldn't quit.

I wasn't aiming for a lightning fast time to begin with - but after miles of stopping at each porta potty and terrible cramping, I was far behind my target pace.  But it really didn't matter - I ended up finishing in 5 hours and 56 minutes.  What really mattered though, was the support that each of you had contributed to over the several months prior to actual race day.  I had contributed roughly $5,200 to the DFMC team - and as a whole, we raised a record breaking $4,556,954.60 - 100% of which went directly to the Claudia Adams Barr Program for basic cancer research.  That's what truly mattered - that together we were making strides to beat a disease that will affect 1 in 3 people at some point during their lifetime.  And that's precisely why I'm back for more!  So I'm asking for your help, after all I couldn't do it without your support!  Please visit My Fundraising Page to donate online or for more information on other ways to donate!  Thanks you in advance for your support...each dollar is bringing us closer to a cure!