Leanne is Racing Again with Team In Training to Save Lives!

Training update 8/1/10:

What a week this one was in my quest to once again be a Marathon runner! I learned several key pieces of information… some of it personally and some by osmosis via other people’s traumas. What I learned myself was that I have more inside me than I give myself credit for, and there are times when I truly enjoy running (yes, they are few and far in between, but the good days tend to be really enjoyable ones). And what I learned from my friend Megan is that when you use the “outdoor facilities” so to speak at Inspiration Point at Tilden Park it is best to not finish off with a random nice looking leaf and allow oneself to “drip dry”. Poor Meg is now dealing was a nasty case of Poison Sumac on her butt, but it has been a learning experience that she has been (humorously) sharing with the Team (for their own benefit, of course!).

For a week that started off with some nasty hill repeats on Tuesday night’s track workout at the Lafayette Reservoir up this long ass hill (read: practically a mountain) that leads to the Rim Trail which was torture neatly disguised all in the name of learning how to properly tackle hill work in preparation for the Nike SF Marathon, ended with some 13 miles of gently rolling hills, a few baby duck and rabbit sightings, a few questionable smells (it is horse/cow/winery country after all) and a fabulous lunch afterwards with Ernie, Jane and Megan, who are three of my teammates and Brian, who is one our amazing honorees (and who sat for hours in the sun manning one of our waterstops and handing out cups of gatorade, water, questionably stale pretzels, and my favorite running related treat: gummy bears).

So many of you know that a half marathon is a running event of 21,097.5 meters, or about 68,640 feet (give or take a few here or there), or 13.1 miles. And that, my friends, was essentially my training run this past Saturday, 7/31. Whew! Felt like it afterwards for sure. But I am blessed to be part of an amazing team of about 113 truly dedicated individuals that has raised a combined $144,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society this summer (of which “Team Leanne” has raised nearly $1,200!). And I’m equally blessed to be living and training in the Bay Area, where we can go out on a Saturday for a run in the gorgeous Livermore Wine Country that sort of looks like this…

Yes, race fans, that really is me second to the left (in the teal blue tank top/black shorts/white hat), along with some of my running buddies, in the beautiful middle of nowhere! I think this photo was taken around mile 8 of our 13 mile run, on the way back along Wetmore Rd in Livermore after we’d headed out to Sycamore Grove Park (again, somewhere between ‘no’ and ‘where’).

We’d started out super early (read: 7am, when most of you are still happily in your pajamas) and the weather was gorgeously overcast and a bit cool – just how I like it. The first five miles actually flew by, which in itself is a miracle for me since I don’t looooovvvveee running. It’s more slightly that I like running and if that only really on alternating days. But when I finished my run I was exhausted in a good way, and came jetting along back into Almond Park with my running buddy Jane to the cheers and mad clapping of many of my teammates and coaches. That is one of the things I like best about Team In Training -- other than the whole thing about raising money that will hopefully one day help kick cancer big time in the ass big time -- is the support you get from the coaches, the team, alumni, staff, and our honorees who joined us that morning to inspire us.

But this was a good example of me liking a run -- fun friends, a little goofy-ness, pretty scenery, only minor aches and issues, and not terribly hot. I have to be sure to remember this day because at some point I will no doubt have another day that I do not like. That is when remembering good days like Saturday, and remembering that as I hurt, feel tired, want to stop, and thinking this whole ‘little running adventure’ of mine really truly SUCKS, that having to go through chemotherapy like my friend and another team honoree Justin is doing right now sucks even more than I can imagine. Usually the thought of that alone keeps me from whining.

A note about Justin since some of you asked… a while back I’d mentioned that he found out in May that his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (HL) was back yet again for about the third time over the past 2 ½ years, and that his auto stem cell transplant (using his own cells) from back in November ’09 did not work (after thinking for several months that it had). So the next step is a full on bone marrow transplant. After testing his entire family (Justin is Hispanic, so finding donors with a high match ratio is challenging) he received high match scores with his sister Jessica. I ran into Justin last week on Wednesday at an event LLS calls “Cause For Celebration” that celebrates the mid-season accomplishments of all its Team In Training teams, and got an update on how he’s doing. Justin is finishing his last round of chemo this month, and is feeling tired but reasonably well, and if all goes as planned and he doesn’t get sick or having any complications he’ll receive his bone marrow transplant from his sister’s cells either the last Friday in August or the first Friday in September (which is TERRIFFIC news!) followed by about six months of hospital stays, isolation, follow up treatments and drugs so he doesn’t reject the transplant (which is sort of mixed good and bad news). Please keep Justin in your thoughts in the coming weeks and months.

Again, thank you all so much for your amazing generosity and continued support of my marathon training and my fundraising efforts! If you haven’t had an opportunity to donate yet (that September 1 deadline is quickly approaching) please take a quick moment to make a tax-deductible donation -- large or small donations really do help the Cause and the amount is greatly appreciated either way. You can do so by checking out the link via my Facebook page (you’ll see the purple/teal fundraising widget on the left hand side of my FB page) or by visiting my secure online fundraising page at: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/nikesf10/lfurman.

More updates to follow in the coming weeks, and more big milestones as we tackle 14 miles this next weekend in Pleasanton, and a grueling 15 miles the weekend after that in Walnut Creek (that I am already really nervous about)! Stay tuned! GO TEAM!

~Leanne

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7/19 Update:

First off, a BIG thank you to all of my donors! You guys are ROCK STARS and we are already at over $1,000! Just imagine, that $1,000 supports one week’s salary for a medical researcher at UCSF, Stanford, or Berkeley who may discover key information that leads to developing curative treatments for those with Leukemia and other blood cancers! And I wouldn't be able to do it without you all! Your support -- whether it's encouragement, or a shout-out on a training day when I am getting up early, or a donation, or all of the above -- really goes a long way toward making a huge difference in the lives of others! If you haven't had a chance to make a small donation in support of my marathon training and fundraising efforts for LLS, please take a moment to visit http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/nikesf10/lfurman-- any amount is greatly appreciated! And now on to the training stuff/drama/goodness...

Well, another milestone under my (water) belt -- 12 miles on Saturday at Marina Park running along the beautiful Emeryville and Berkeley shorelines. Whoo-hoo! It was perfect running weather (or at least the way I like it) 65 degrees, overcast and a bit foggy. A BIG difference between our 10 mile run (my first of the season into double digits!) the weekend before at Heather Farms in Walnut Creek, where it was sunny, and 85+ degrees and miserable. I will take overcast and colder any day (which is why I'm doing a marathon in SF in October people!).

Despite the gorgeous (overcast) weather, this was a hard run for me. The first 6 miles were totally fine, and we'd be chatting and making comments. I was excited that my friend Hannah (who is one of my former mentees from Winter season 2009) was up from Orange County to run with us (she is on TNT there, training for the Disneyland half marathon in September) so it was really nice to catch up with her. Half the fun of running with the Team is chatting with folks, and being goofy, and I've been told I can do that in spades.

(Photo:Jane, me and Megan -- all smiles, at the halfway pointjust north of Golden Gate Fields)

But at about 6.5 miles I started getting this 'pain in my ass' -- literally, on the right side. (See below for more on that). Every time I'd put my foot down there would be this pain. And since it came out of nowhere, it was hard to keep positive, and stay motivated. I wanted to walk, but my running buddies Jane (who is a mentor this season) and Megan (who I met my first TNT season, and is a Captain on the team with me this summer) really pushed me through it.

I'm sure they thought I was crazy, when we were running back up this (awful) little hill behind Golden Gate Fields, when I whipped out my iPhone and started (attempting) to rap along with my go-to running song, "Til I Collapse" by Eminem. Not that I am a huge fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the words at the beginning and later on in the song are very appropriate, and seem to get me in a (somewhat) better frame of mind. Or at least allowed me to finish my run.

And now for your listening pleasure... (and no, I will not sing, but I did subject Jane and Meg to an attempt at a 'rapping')

"Cause sometimes you feel tired, feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse."

So I suffered through another 5 miles or so, and you cannot believe how happy I was to come back into Marina Park and know I was back in Emeryville close to our finish. I wanted to lay down on the ground and just stay there, but after talking to Coach Tim he thinks it's basically 'piriformis'. For those of you uneducated, like me, on body mechanics the piriformis is a really small muscle that basically runs from inside the pelvis towards your hip, and is one of the external rotators of the hip and leg. This means that as the muscle works, it helps to turn the foot and leg outward. Now, I already overpronate, and have weak ankles, and have been experiencing some IT Band pain (outside of my knees) so I am adding this to my little list of complaints.

But this constant pain during the back half of my run got me thinking I really need to see a Sports Podiatrist, and look into getting some custom orthotics made for my shoes. So I go this afternoon to a doctor Coach Time recommended, Dr. Hannaford, who is a runner himself having done marathons and ultras and god knows what else. We'll see what he has to say.

This next week we do a nice 8 mile run Saturday at Inspiration Point up in Tilden Park (which is gorgeous, despite the hills), and then I'm doing the 'Wharf to Wharf Race' from Santa Cruz to Capitola on Sunday which is always a lot of fun. Thanks again for all your support! More to come.... :)

Leanne

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7/9 Update:

Brief update on my marathon training and fundraising efforts through Team In Training:

To date, Team Leanne (which includes all of you!) has raised over $900 to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society! To put that all into perspective, that $900 could breakdown as follows: $500 provides a local blood cancer patient with financial assistance for one year to help with transportation and co-pay costs, and $200 funds one Family Support Group meeting of 9-15 participants (the SF Bay Area chapter alone has 9 of these support group meetings per month!), $150 allows 5 patients to make a "First Connection" with a trained peer volunteer who is personally knowledgeable about their disease, and $50 is the cost of a CT scan. AMAZING! Those are your dollars at work -- all for a really good cause! :)

The larger team that I am on, Team Epic as we are nicknamed (which encompasses the Diablo Valley area from just Lafayette-Walnut Creek-Concord down to Pleasanton-Livermore, there's many more teams geographically here in the SF Bay Area) has raised over $91,000 so far! If you’ve already been able to donate, thank you all so very much for your generous contributions! If you haven’t had a chance yet I’d greatly appreciate your support by visiting my fundraising website http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/nikesf10/lfurman to make donation. When I say that any donation amount truly helps the cause please believe it – because even $5, $10, $25 goes a long way! A couple of quick facts: Your donations are completely tax-deductible, you’ll get a receipt emailed to you if you donate online via my secure fundraising website, 75% of all funds go directly to fund research and into cancer patient assistance, and all money I raise stays here locally in the SF/Bay Area!

Now for the Training update as of 7/9/10, and an inspirational story about one of my Honorees:

We are now into week 7 of training and I’m now up to 10 miles for the longer Saturday runs (as of tomorrow, Saturday 7/10) and about 25+ miles a week (plus cross-training days, which I hate to admit I am not so good at keeping on top of). WHOO-HOO -- double digits! It’s been about 9 months since I’ve been anywhere near that mileage so my body really has to adjust to doing that in general, plus my left knee is starting to give me a little bit of trouble again, and I've been sick the past week, but I am motoring through it.

Many of you who know me well know that a big part of why I keep doing this is this is the actual Cause itself – the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society -- and the fact that I am out there doing something that benefits some of the wonderful honorees (patients) that I have come to know and love, and countless ones I know I will never meet.

I try to keep this fact front & foremost in my mind -- especially in the heat (that I don’t do well with), and with the 5am wake-ups on Saturday mornings when I really want to sleep in, and having to give up my Tuesday & Thursday nights for the foreseeable future, and all the with the nagging little injuries that seem to flare up when you put a 40+ year old body through something it’s clearly not used to (hey, a girl can fib her age a bit, can’t she?). There are plenty of people out there that would just love to have my crappy running day, and have that be the worst of their problems.

When I started running again, a little over two years ago, I really wasn’t into it. Yes, if you read these email updates or check out my Facebook it does seem like it is all I talk about these days (and part of that is to pysche myself out/up). But I really don’t actually like the running aspect. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do have my days when I think “hey, that was really fun, I felt good about that run”, but I tend to enjoy the team mentality more, the people I get to meet, and the Cause I am supporting, more than getting out there and doing the running itself. Let's face it, running kinda sucks (but cancer sucks more).

This season I am the team’s Honoree Captain (rather than a mentor of new participants as I’ve been the past two seasons). What these means is that I work with our Team Honorees -- there are 8 of them, all current patients in treatment struggling with their own diagnosis, or former patients who have benefitted from the research, new drugs, services, and efforts of LLS – and help those team honorees share their stories with the team/participants in order to inspire them to do more and keep up the great work they are doing with their training and fundraising.

My first season with TNT we were told about one of our littlest honorees named Harry Drake (or “Baby Harry” as we’d call him), who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) in June 2008 at the tender age of 6 months. Harry was extremely sick, and given only a 10% chance of survival. I can’t even imagine what a parent must go through knowing that their child might very well die, but I know I’d be devastated if either of my nieces was ever that ill. That season I thought of Harry often when I was out running. I prayed daily and weekly that something good would happen. I would read about his diagnosis, treatment and recovery at www.hopingforharry.com when his mother Katie would post new details. I’d see pictures Katie would send the team, where little Harry looked very sick and was attached to dozens of machines, and lived in the hospital for months on end, with his diagnosis getting worse and worse, and his parents preparing themselves for the worst. I'd be excited when he had a good week, I'd be excited when he had a decent week, I was excited when there was no news, and I was always in a bit of a funk when there was bad news to hear.

Now skip forward nearly two years since then (from 2008 to now 2010). I thought back at that time that I “got it” – I knew the impact of what I was training for, knew the good work LLS was doing, knew that the money I’d stressed about raising for what seemed like months on end was going to fund brilliant researchers at UCSF and Stanford and other nearby hospitals and help find the next new drug that would finally cure all blood cancers. In a big way I did "get it". Then last weekend I planned our “Honoree Picnic” – all part of my “volunteer job” with TNT – where we bring as many of our Team Honorees together after one of our Saturday runs to tell their stories to the team (and eat a ton of great food!). And for the first time I actually got to meet “Baby Harry” in person. Not that hearing about him for so long didn’t impact me, but seeing him in person made me so emotional that it all fell into place. Seeing him in person excited me beyond words.

Now Harry is a cute, energetic, rambunctious 2 ½ year old little boy who is finally well enough after a bone marrow transplant a year ago to be out and about and riding his bike with his big brother Jack. Harry is by no means completely out of the woods yet but is doing much better one year post-transplant, though still not eating on his own (a goal his parents have for this year). Harry has made it further than anyone has said he would, and his doctors have said if he is able to make it to his 2 year anniversary (next May 2011) his aggressive form of leukemia will most likely not relapse.

Harry is the reason I do this. And Bill, Brian, Jen, Kendra, Patricia, Brian, and David, our other team honorees. And my next door neighbor Erica, and wonderful people like John Nunes who were taken from this world way too soon. I can only hope that getting out there super early on a Saturday morning to run 5, 10, 15, or even 26.2 miles, and putting myself through the rigors of training for something my body clearly tells me at times that it isn’t really meant to do, and raising that final $10 or $500 or even $1000 dollars needed to help find a cure for blood cancers will make even the smallest impact seem huge.

I’m hoping you feel a little bit inspired by my story, but more so about Harry’s, and I’m hoping you’ll send a few bucks my way to help me reach this goal. Please check out http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/nikesf10/lfurman and make any sort of donation you are able to. You’ll get a personal thank you from me, and you’ll be making a huge impact in the lives of others living with a blood cancer diagnosis.

Thank you all so much for your support! You are ROCK STARS and I couldn’t do all this without you! Be on the lookout for my next training update in the coming weeks. GO TEAM!

~Leanne

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Update 5/22/10:

I'm training to participate in the Nike San Francisco Marathon on October 17, 2010 as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training program. All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop blood cancers such as Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and Myeloma from taking more lives.

I am completing all 26.2 miles of this event (which will be my second marathon with TNT) in honor of all individuals who are battling blood cancers, but especially our team honorees: Bill, David, Jen, Patricia, Kendra, Brian, little Harry (who's just 2.5 years old), and Justin (who just recently found out in early September that his cancer is back, is beginning chemo again, and desperately needs a bone marrow donor match), but especially In Memory of a very personal honoree of mine, John Nunes -- a fellow Martinez native, good friend and unbelievable mentor during my high school Campus Life days who unfortunately lost his battle with leukemia in late March 2009.

These are the people I keep in mind when I'm having a really crappy training day, and the miles get really long, and the weather gets really hot (which isn't good for me), and my knees start to ache and swell, and I start to hate running all over again -- because what I am going through in that very moment is nothing compared to what they have had to, or still need to, overcome! They are the real heroes and serve as inspiration for our team day after day, but we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line -- finally finding a cure for blood cancers!

So how can you help? Check out http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/nikesf10/lfurman

Please make a tax-deductible donation to support my participation in Team In Training and help advance LLS's mission. Any amount (no matter how big or small) is truly appreciated and will go a long way towards helping to achieve this incredible goal!

I hope you will visit my web site often -- http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/nikesf10/lfurman. Be sure to check back frequently to see my progress toward both my marathon training and fundraising goals. Please also feel free to share my website URL with your friends, family & coworkers who may have a personal connection to leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma or Hodgkin's disease, or who may just want to donate a little something to such a worthwhile cause!

Thanks as always for your continued support! ~ Leanne