Race: Philly Rock n Roll Half
Official Time: 1:55:23
Course: Flat and pretty.
Weather: A little known weather system called a Humidity Vortex moved in STRAIGHT FROM HELL.

Top line: I thought I was going to PR in this one. I did not. Not even close. 10 minutes slower than that. It wasn't my worst, either, so there is that. We also raised a good bit of money for charity.

Excuses: Going into weekend, I'd been showing signs of a slight cold, scratchy throat, tired, achy. I think it was going away by Saturday night, Sunday morning. But one of the pleasures of being me is that race nerves don't just make me go to the toilet like crazy -- my apologies to the maid at the Hilton Garden Inn -- they also make me snotty. So did I still have a cold, or was the steady stream of snot threatening to drip onto my pre-run banana just nerves? The world may never know.

The race: Started out just over the pace I needed, figuring I could pick it up once I figured out how I was feeling. You'll see below how well that didn't go. By mile five, I was fairly certain I wouldn't be able to keep it up. And I was sweating. Sweating like crazy.

How much was I sweating? At mile 6, when I looked down for a Gu, they'd had both gone, slipped right out of the belt thanks to the sheets of water lubricating it. (Non-runners: Gu is a little packet of slime that contains electrolytes, sugar and caffeine that one chokes down at various points in the race.) 

How humid was it? My feet would have been LESS wet if I'd just stuck them in a bucket of water. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to toss those shoes once and for all. They're smelling up the entire back yard. (Yes, they're outside and killing flies and mosquitoes.)

But I finished. So there's that. If New York full is this kind of humid, I'll just go ahead and figure out a way to give myself a heart attack before the race starts to save me the embarrassment.

The good news:  This was the race I was running with Team in Training. Our work team this year was small -- only five of us. But we managed to raise  $6,695 bucks to fight leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers. In fact, there is still time to donate!

This wasn't an official race for the New York chapter, so we traveled on our own without the usual cheering squad. But the thing about wearing TNT purple is cheering squads will find you. The Philly chapter staffed the water station just after mile four. More importantly,  a couple of coaches -- one from D.C. and one from the Philly area -- ran with our runners in the last three miles of the race. Like angels did they appear. I'm pretty sure one of those guys ran with me, but I was so focused on my suffering that I just thought it was some dude in a green shirt who decided to have a chat at Mile 12. Didn't occur to me until after that the coaches wear green shirts.

And while I didn't PR, Natalie and Abbey, two of our other runners did, which was very exciting and surprising considering the conditions.

The splits
Mile 1:  8:09.3
Mile 2:  8:01.8
Mile 3:  8:15.3
Mile 4: 8:08.5
Mile 5:  8:14.4
Mile 6:  8:25.7
Mile 7:  9:25.0
Mile 8:  8:50.0
Mile 9:  9:35.9
Mile 10:  9:26.6
Mile 11:  9:04.6
Mile 12:  9:10.7
Mile 13: 9:02.5

The FDA has given a “breakthrough therapy designation” to chimeric antigen receptor therapy. This is a most excellent thing. It’s also a complicated thing. Here’s a short video that explains SOME of it.

That explanation above is from MSKCC, where I was lucky enough to get a tour of the gene therapy labs. But the breakthrough designation is going to a team led by Carl H. June, MD, a Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine and director of Translational Research in the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

And guess where some of the funding for those studies came from? That’s right. TNT, LLS and … YOU.

Good job, yall.

This morning, I had the worst run I’ve had in quite some time. What was supposed to be an easy six or so miles from Brooklyn to work in Midtown … was a not-so-easy six miles from Brooklyn to work. And while I usually get cranky because I catch stop lights at Atlantic and Tillary and Canal and Houston, this morning I was getting cranky because I caught green lights at all of those.

Sweating. Huffing. Puffing. Just wanting to curl up on the sidewalk. And why? The sun was behind the clouds. There was a decent breeze most of the way. It still felt relatively cool. My run on Saturday was a lot hotter -- and a lot faster. It was, incredibly humid, though. Something like 80% humidity.

As early as mile two I was thinking of calling it quits. The Brooklyn Bridge subway stop has never looked so appealing. And neither has the Spring Street stop. 

But I didn’t stop. What I told myself was this: Think about writing this post on the Team in Training fundraising blog and that a bunch of people with cancer were reading it. People who are suffering through chemo or radiation. People who are worried about seeing next year. And here I was wimping out at mile three. 

Now, granted, this sort of mind game might not be the smartest thing in the world depending on conditioning, weather and the like. Play this wrong and the guy sitting in the chair getting chemo might one day look up from his iPad and say, “You hear about this dumbass gave himself a heart-attack running too hard?”

But it wasn’t that kind of running too hard. Sure, I was sweating and slow and ended the run a little nauseous. But my heart rate never seemed dangerously out of control. And a little Gatorade seemed to make it all better.

Anyway, can’t WAIT for speed work tomorrow night.

See that photo up there? That's me all dudded up to literally fight cancer. I put on a sterile suit, ran into a lab at MSKCC and just beat the crap out of some cancer using some genetically modified viruses to target receptor sites on those little punk-ass cancer cells.

Okay, that didn't really happen. God knows if I was let loose in that sort of lab, we'd have a zombie epidemic within six months. And not those shambling Walking Dead zombies, either. Those Resident Evil things. (Okay, that's a lie too. I'd just contaminate the lab and ruin years' worth of research. And probably break something.)

Anyway, it's another year, another Team in Training season and I'm back to raise money to fight cancer. That picture up there IS actually at MSKCC. This year I'm on the Team In Training-New York Executive Committee (ooooooooh, fancy) and it was part of a lab tour in which we got to see some pretty mind-blowing work from Dr. Renier Brentjens and his gang that is literally curing cancer in some cases.  

Mind-blowing work that you have helped to fund -- and hopefully continue to fund.

This year, my fellow Crainiacs and I are going to run the Philly Rock N Roll Half Marathon. And hopefully while we're sweating and training and trying not to hurt ourselves, some of you will find it in your hearts (and in your pockets) to throw a few dollars our way.

If you’d rather donate to the general team, you can do so here. 

Patients need these cures and they need your support.

Thank you!