War on Cancer: Joe Karam Reporting for Duty

Breaking a moment of contemplation, the air horn, grotesque, menacing, liberating, rang across Lake San Antonio. As if jolted by the sound of a predator, a wave of primates in penguin attire collapsed forward into the cold water, with great splatter and utter disregard for one another, bodies overlapping, fists and elbows flying into skulls and jaws, until the melee eventually dissolved into a more sportsmanlike flock of rotating arms inching towards the glorious morning sun. It was 8:15am on Saturday, May 1, fifteen minutes after the start of the 2010 Wildflower Long Course Triathlon, and the fourth wave of participants, comprised of scores of 25-to-29-year-old men sporting yellow swim caps, had just been sent off. Somewhere inside that wave, with the words "$12,000 vs Cancer" written on his back, Joe Karam, your humble courier, was on an epic delivery mission.

The Swim

With the initial contact sport phase of the event behind us, I was able to appreciate some unexpected positive side-effects of a crowded lake race. With so much commotion all around, the mind remains focused on navigation, and navigation alone. No time to wonder about the quality of your stroke; you're on auto-pilot and that's what all the drills were for. No time to waste unnecessary heartbeats being surprised by the feel of something solid underwater; you're now always expecting it and never caught off-guard. No time to shiver at the thought of what else could be swimming with you inside that lake; with hundreds of human limbs rummaging the water at once, the boundary separating your own body from the large mysterious body of water has now effectively been pushed to the outskirts of the school of swimmers. Finally, no time to wonder how much longer you still have to swim; the race is actually fun, and it will be over before you know it.

Sighting turned out to be much easier than during our training: with so many swimmers racing in the same direction, it is reasonably safe to assume that the group as a whole is generally correct, and you can concentrate on simply looking sideways from within your natural stroke to check that you are not deviating from your neighbors, only infrequently looking up and forward towards the next buoy. The buoys themselves were gigantic inflated orange spheres the diameter of a swimmer, which were very hard to miss. The few times where it was important to check on the buoy itself rather than the swimmers was when that buoy marked one of the right turns of the clockwise rectangular course. Swim turns are not like bike turns, and rather than make an arc around the buoy, it makes more sense to follow basic principles of Euclidian geometry and swim straight at the buoy, make a sharp turn in place, then continue in a straight line towards the next one.

Another challenge of competitive open water swims that I experienced first hand during the race is swimming right next to someone without inhaling water rather than air. Not only is your neighbor splattering water into your face, but the surface of the water moves up and down more unpredictably as a result of interfering waves created by both swimmers, making it easier for you to mistime the opening of your airways. Of course, this unpredictability is probably nothing compared to what can happen in a far wilder ocean race, but in either case the best way to neutralize the effects of the swimmer next to you is to change your stroke pattern from an odd number to an even number of strokes between each inhalation, and to always have your head come up facing away from the other swimmer. Don't ask me what happens when you're surrounded on both sides, though I'd guess it's probably worth it to turn on the turbo for a few seconds and pass both swimmers if you can, letting them duke it out behind you.

As we approached the mid-point of the swim course, the yellow caps were starting to scatter quite a bit, becoming rather sparse, which threatened the race with monotony. So the timing couldn't have been better when two new cap colors started peppering the surface of the lake, filling the spaces between the yellow caps. The lime green caps belonged to the wave that had started five minutes after ours: the first of three waves of 30-to-34-year-old men, whose faster swimmers were already catching up with us. Conversely, the sky blue caps belonged to the wave that had started five minutes before ours: the other wave of 25-to-29-year-old men, whose slower swimmers we were already catching up with. Sky blue caps also included the rare under-25-year-old male participants, who were few in numbers in an endurance event such as this long course triathlon, where the optimum mix of youth and experience is often reached a bit later in life than for shorter triathlons or most other sports.

The presence of new cap colors added some variety to the psychology of the race. Passing a sky blue cap clearly produced a very nice feeling, and, since there was obviously no keeping up with someone who had just closed a five-minute gap on you, you could at least still enjoy the challenge of keeping a lime green cap by your side for as long as possible, using them to pace you, enjoying every long second they took to pass you before forcing you to retreat behind the poor excuse that they had been doing leg kicks the whole time while you were just using your arms, or, more constructively, enticing you to go home after the race and start improving the efficiency of your kicking technique so that it becomes a worthwhile energy expenditure in the future.

After passing the last few buoys and kayaks, I set my sights on the exit ramp and the cheering crowd cradling it. This was an inspiring moment, one that I savored with every stroke that brought me closer to shore. The previous two five-hour-short nights of sleep had been ridden with anxiety, and I wasn't even sure I'd be making it out of my tent this morning, let alone complete one of the hardest long course triathlons in the country. But in order to be victorious in an endurance event spanning several hours, where an elusive moment of strength and confidence can so quickly melt away into one of weakness and apprehension, one must accumulate a succession of small victories, and, more importantly, recognize them as such and commit them to memory so they can be recalled in times of need, such as those I knew I would encounter sooner or later today.

The first of many small victories this morning was deciding to drink a cup of coffee, which I hardly ever do, and noticing how wide awake it made me feel, then trusting that the caffeine in the power gels I would feed on during the day would work just as effectively. This was an important mental step that allowed me to put the concern of sleep deprivation behind me and never look back. Now, at the end of a strong swim, I was achieving another important victory. Not only was I now wide awake, but my muscles were also warmed up and my mind was sharp enough to tackle the cycling portion of the event, where split-second reaction times were going to be of the essence.

Suddenly my fingertips touched the ramp rising at the bottom of the water, signaling to me that I had swum far enough and was ready for my amphibious emergence from the lake. Enacting a sequence of moves I had mentally rehearsed many times, I stood up, trampling the water, then, further lifted by the ovation of the crowd, started running uphill towards the transition area, my bare feet too energized to complain about the rugged concrete under them, and my hands too busy with the zipper cord of my wetsuit to wave back at familiar faces shouting "Go Joe!" or stranger faces almost as excitedly shouting "Go Team!". I was feeling like a champion once again, reverting to the belief that I wasn't completely crazy after all, and that despite the many things that could have already gone wrong and could still be going wrong in the next few hours, this long course finish might well happen.

The Ride

Without a doubt, what made my experience of this triathlon most different from everyone else's was my choice of bicycle. If somebody told me that I was the only contestant this year attempting the Wildflower Long Course without some sort of road bike, I wouldn't be able to point them to any counter-evidence, having personally witnessed nothing but road bikes around me on the course. My red Diamondback 1999 Crestview is technically a hybrid bike, somewhere between a mountain bike and a road bike, but from the perspective of most cyclists, who take a more binary view of the universe of bicycles, I was riding a mountain bike.

Mountain bike means heavier frame, thicker tires, a geometry that has the rider standing upright on the saddle rather than leaning forward, lower low gears and lower high gears, and pedals that can only be pushed down with the quadriceps and not also pulled up with the hamstrings. Overall, keeping a mountain bike moving as fast as a road bike requires considerably more effort. So why was I not riding a road bike? Partly because, at this point, tougher workouts are more valuable to me than shorter finish times, and also because, sometimes, life doesn't let you choose your bike. The cancer patients I am riding for had their road bike taken away from them and replaced with a mountain bike, and then were told to keep going at road bike speed in a road bike world.

I rode out of the transition area without delay. Being on a mountain bike was a serious handicap that I knew would cripple my performance on both the ride and the subsequent run. Making things worse, one of the things that had been keeping me up at night was the possibility of not completing the bike ride by the course closure's cut-off time, which would result in my being prevented from participating in the run, and, therefore, in my being disqualified from the race in a most humiliating fashion. Thanks to my training, the cut-off time wasn't likely to be an issue if the ride went according to plan, but an unexpected mechanical problem needing attention, like the dreaded flat tire, could potentially be damaging enough to cost me the race. I had to pace myself and stay within a rather narrow speed window: riding too conservatively would put me at risk of missing the cut-off, while riding too aggressively would result in an early burn-out.

After about a mile I found myself on Beach Hill, a steep climb from which you could see the lake slowly fall down by your side. Some of my teammates, who described being passed by me on my mountain bike as a "demoralizing" experience, had been joking that I ought to carry a video camera pointing behind me on race day to capture the facial expressions of road bikers I'd be passing on the hills, especially "Nasty Grade," the 5-mile long 1000-feet-high climb coming up after mile 40. I appreciated the compliment, but I knew there would hardly be any passing today, not on Nasty Grade or anywhere else. The second half of the training season had taught me that my tenacity could overcome my mechanical handicap on rides totaling up to 40 miles, but on longer rides I'd have to ration my effort from the start, and today's ride wasn't just 56 miles long, but, with the last 16 miles being savagely hilly, it was wise to treat the 40-mile mark as the mid-point of an 80-mile course. The elevation differentials themselves added up to 4,300 feet of cumulative uphills, and to an equal amount of downhills.

Being the underdog on the course offered its share of advantages. The cheers of the crowds were usually a little louder when they saw my ride, and cyclists who passed me often felt compelled to pay their respects and express some admiration. In racing, as in life, the measure of one's handicap, real or self-imposed, is an equal measure of one's potential to be a source of inspiration to oneself and to others. That is what those cheering crowds understood and that is what they came here to watch and celebrate, not just once as the race leader rode by, but the whole day long, 1,860 times, and a few thousand more times the next day during the Olympic-distance race: the power of individuals dueling their limits. The power of one.

Crowds became a rarity after the early hills turned into flatlands. In the middle of nowhere, a family likely living in one of the isolated houses nearby had set up some chairs by the side of the road to spend the day absorbing all the excitement this lonely road would offer until next year. Further along, a bridge took us over a shallow river flowing peacefully through large polygonal rocks. Such flat portions of the road were ideal to handle one's nutrition and hydration. It's also where I started paying attention to the age of the cyclists, written in marker ink on their calves (yes, women too, although I wasn't to come across any such creatures until the later part of the bike ride).

It is a statistical fact that, irrespective of your speed, the earlier your wave was scheduled to start the race relative to other waves, the more likely you are to be passed by more people than you will be passing. So while it may be shamelessly ageist to have older age groups start after younger ones while still requiring them to complete the race by the same absolute cut-off times, there are hidden psychological rewards for older participants starting in those later waves: irrespective of their speed, they are likely to pass more people than they will be passed by; what's more, as the race progresses, those they will be passing will be increasingly younger. My situation was the exact opposite, and that would have remained statistically true even on a much faster road bike: I was destined to be passed by more older men than I would pass younger ones, and as the race progressed, the men passing me would be increasingly older. Fortunately, knowledge of statistics shielded me from some unnecessary vexations.

As I entered a zone of steeper downhills, my hands positioned themselves around the brake levers, activating them in a controlled periodic pattern architected around my breathing. With additional practice and new skills under my belt, the course now appeared a lot flatter than during practice weekend. Which brings me to the somewhat traumatizing note on which practice weekend had begun, a few weeks back. To get from the campsite to the transition area, where all three legs of the course begin and end, one must ride the bike down Lynch Hill, an abrupt 20% grade with curves (and a magnificent view of the lake, vertically panning as you ride, as if slowly landing in a glass elevator). Going down Lynch Hill first thing in the morning and not yet warmed up was one thing, but it was quite another to activate the brakes on Lynch Hill only to be greeted with the most horrendously unnerving squeak.

I was hoping the squeak was due to the sheer steepness of the grade. I had, after all, never ridden down such a steep grade before. But flatter grounds failed to resolve the issue. The next obvious culprit was the newness of the brake pads, which I had just had replaced and adjusted by a professional mechanic, the same mechanic that had successfully taken care of this bike during its Stanford years, and whom I had taken the pains to track down to his current bike shop. Thinking that mileage would resolve the problem, I thus went on to ride all 56 miles of the Wildflower Long Course, forced to choose, at every downhill, between out-of-control accelerations and the equally nerve-wracking torture of that squeak. This draining dilemma, particularly unsolvable on drawn-out downhills, had me once so frozen that I ended up drifting across the center line into the deserted incoming traffic lane, having to dodge, in lieu of cars, castigating remarks from unsympathetic bikers. Frazzled, I had to dismount to regain my composure.

I later learnt that my brake pads needed to be adjusted in a toed-in configuration in order to reliably prevent squeaking. I also learnt that a tune-up can end up being a tune-down, and that a bike should not be disturbed before an important ride unless there is plenty of time to test-ride it. Finally, I learnt that a rider can know more about his ride than a mechanic with decades of experience: when I took my bike back to the shop for another tune-up a few weeks before the race, and the mechanic (a different one with thrice the experience) ignored my directive to toe the brake pads in, assuring me that he had tested them extensively and had heard no squeaking, I decided to not take any chances with the two inches of rubber on which my life depended, and, less than a minute later, I returned from the parking lot behind the shop and asked the mechanic to follow me out back. Too vindicated to be abrasive, I preferred to not say a word and instead just let my brakes do the squeaking. My pads were then promptly toed in.

The morning of the race, there was no squeaking down Lynch Hill. This fact, seemingly trivial, was another hard-earned victory. Better yet, I felt more relaxed than on other downhills of comparable grade that we had been practicing on in recent weeks. Overcoming the dreaded Lynch Hill descent before the race even started was a momentous vote of confidence: it was not only the steepest downhill I'd be riding today, but it was also the final descent of the bike course (and of the run course). Having conquered Lynch Hill first thing in the morning meant that the prospect of the final descent wouldn't be haunting me during the entire ride.

The rematch I most wanted, however, was with that downhill that had made me dismount on the other side of the center line, and which was now supposed to come up in front of me any minute. It didn't help any that this episode had been reported to the coaches as me having "swerved into incoming traffic." Dramatized or not, the problem with crossing the center line is that, cars or no cars, it is grounds for disqualification during the race. Plus, let's face it, even if no one sees you, you are still left feeling like an incompetent fool. But today I was fiercely ready for a showdown with my topographical nemesis. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, I reached an unmistakable right turn that I knew for certain came some time after the dreaded downhill; I had descended the hill without knowing it!

This year Team in Training represented approximately 8% of all Wildflower participants (about 400 out of 5,000, across all race distances), yet almost everyone seemed to know why we were here, and the "Go Team!" I kept hearing over my shoulder, sometimes with a compliment on my fundraising figure, often came from non-TNT cyclists. Some mentors on the team had recommended displaying your first name on your jersey, but I decided against it, so that I'd know that the occasional "Go Joe!" would come from someone who actually knew a few things about me. A familiar encounter, highly valued on those arduous roads, should not be gambled into a mirage.

One such welcome encounter was with my former ride-and-tie partner (see mid-season update), who had caught up with me about a third of the way into the bike race. He was one of the younger contestants and had started in the wave before mine, which meant he must have been one of those sky blue swim caps I passed in the lake. We leapfrogged each other for a while, until the half-way point of the course, where I pulled over at an aid station for a bathroom break in one of those portable toilet stalls affectionately called porta-potties.

I wasted a good five minutes in there, to no avail, discovering that, despite all the fluids you ingest, race-day stress will not let your body relax unless a threshold of absolute urgency is reached. Refusing to waste any more time, and realizing that standing up for a while had helped ease the discomfort, I decided to postpone the whole ordeal and went back on the saddle, trying to focus on the silver lining that I had just given my legs a short rest, but nonetheless noticing that the numbers on cyclists' calves had roughly been incremented by five.

More downhills followed, just as thrilling as a few weeks ago, albeit in a positive way. The greater density of bicycles also helped. Having someone riding in front of you makes you go faster on the downhills, not so much because you're trying to keep up, but because keeping your eye on their rear wheel and monitoring how much it bounces up and down gives you advance notice on any road irregularities that you wouldn't normally be able to see with your naked eyes until much later, if at all. I passed a few people dealing with a flat tire, which made the five minutes I wasted no longer seem so terrible, especially since these stranded cyclists obviously had much greater hopes from this race, what with their disc wheels and aerodynamic helmets.

I felt very strong on the bike for several more miles, including on a segment of road riddled with cracks that rattled bikes like cobblestones. During practice weekend, riding this segment had made me wish that my California state taxes would all go towards fixing that very road, and that it be done before May 1st. My wish hadn't come true, but it didn't matter anymore. I was now amortizing most shocks by standing up on the bike when needed, and hardly had any of the neck and wrist tension that a few weeks ago would have long been plaguing my ride.

As we were approaching the mountainous last sixteen miles of the course, the number of cyclists around me was going up dramatically like clouds in a gathering storm: the various waves of age-groupers had been progressively seeping into each other over time, mixing inextricably, and I was now riding the peak of the resulting bell curve, where the density of bikes was highest. Also increasingly present among the pack were now riders of a different kind; petites silhouettes of alluring proportions, baring hairless musculatures and scintillating backs.

It was also around then that I started accepting drinks from the small armies of volunteers posted at aid stations. My own bottle was running low, and the electrolyte drinks that had been brandished in front of me every few miles were fast becoming irresistible. If the deep orange color and citrusy promise of these drinks weren't enough, consider the volunteers offering them, predominantly college girls from nearby Cal Poly, who had enlisted their help this weekend not just to go through the motions, but to rush devotedly towards you, the athlete, and present you with that bottle like you were the most important person in their life, occasionally showing disappointment when you politely declined.

The last bridge before Nasty Grade hung low above water and was sturdy enough to support cars, but the floor was a skeletal see-through metal grid made up of more air than metal, which made it look like you were hovering above water with nothing supporting you. Approaching that bridge had brought me to an instinctive stop during practice weekend, where I ended up walking my bike across the bridge. But today I rode straight through, even daring to stare down at the water underneath.

Shortly thereafter I made a left turn onto Nasty Grade and started the steep climb. The grade starts relatively mild but becomes steeper after every turn and every deceptive false top. During practice weekend I had pedaled up Nasty Grade in the lowest of low gears, also known as the granny gear. Today I stayed in the high gears the whole time, starting in the lowest of high gears and gearing up whenever standing on the bike felt right. There was no question that climbing Nasty Grade was challenging, but the payoff from the second half of our training was also evident; all those tough hills we had trained on made Nasty Grade seem relatively unremarkable on race day, and it wasn't too long before my pedaling cadence latched onto the beat of a battle drum played by a volunteer perched at the top of the hill.

Nasty Grade itself may not break you, but it will deplete you sufficiently to leave you vulnerable during the remainder of the course, where rolling hills will continue to eat at you in an attempt to finish you off. The last ten miles of the course dragged on forever, alternating between drawn-out climbs and short abrupt descents that left no time for the muscles to recover. My quads, which had been working relentlessly for the past four hours without sharing any of the burden with other muscles groups, were burning. I found myself riding faster than ever on the descents: the climbs were now painful enough to make the fear of a fast descent worth the extra momentum that would effectively shorten the next climb. Each uphill stroke was an insult, each downhill roll a revenge.

My pedaling rhythm was also breaking down and becoming more erratic; unable to keep firing continuously because of the sting in my quads, my legs would jam and stop pedaling every few seconds before resuming for a few more. I was hitting some sort of mechanical wall, but, being at the end of the ride, I was able to remain mentally focused. I wanted the ride to be over, and all I could think of was reaching the transition area as soon as possible so I could hop off the bike and start running. The last part of that thought surprised me at first, but it made physiological sense: the burning sensation in my quads had gotten severe enough that suddenly interrupting all physical motion sounded like a worse proposition than cooling down with a different dynamic exercise.

Then, finally, the calming blueness of the entire lake erupted in front of me, majestically contrasting with the severity of the final descent. I landed down Lynch Hill towards the transition area like I did earlier this morning, maneuvering the last few steep bends safely and confidently, until the ground gradually flattened out to welcome me to the dismount line, one whole hour before the cut-off time.

Soon enough I'll remember that my bike doesn't actually have feelings and that it won't get jealous if I do decide to purchase the road bike I have now solidly earned, but for now I am just proud to have taken my mountain bike from college on the ride of her life, around a legendary race course where no mountain bikes venture and only road bikes roll.

The Run

The run turned out to be the most grueling leg of the race. Psychologically, it was certainly the most dangerous: 13.1 miles is indeed the standard distance of a half-marathon, except that a half-marathon is ordinarily preceded by several hours of sleep, not several hours of swimming and biking. What I had to run today was not a half-marathon, but the third leg of a half-iron-distance triathlon, and a brutally hilly course at that, with 2,800 feet of cumulative uphills and an equal amount of downhills. Failing to lower your expectations accordingly could ruin your entire race experience.

Having hopped off the bike, the chance of a violent accident was now severely diminished for the day, but a more chronic overuse injury was still a possibility. I also had no idea how my body would respond to the final challenge of a 70.3-mile race. Furthermore, a little over two weeks ago, in a final exertion push before the tapering phase of the training, I had gone a little too hard during our practice around the track, and as soon as I started the run leg of our practice triathlon two days later, experienced a sharp pain in the knee that forced me to stop running and to power-walk the whole six miles instead. On the bright side, seeing that I could walk fast enough to almost keep up with many runners, I now knew that power walking would be a respectable fallback option on race day.

I left the transition area jogging cautiously, legs heavy as lead, and was relieved to find out that two weeks of resting, icing, and diligent foam-rolling had helped me heal in time for the race. Though there was always the possibility of the endorphins from the bike ride masking the pain, I was, right here right then, completely pain-free, and that was all that mattered. The sheer change of activity further compounded that boost, and the first couple of miles of the run were almost refreshing. My quads were getting the cool down they so desperately needed, and it was good to be moving through the sceneries at human speeds once again, with the lake on my left side. The rapport with the cheering crowds was also a bit more personal now that it took that much longer to move past them.

My short-term goal was to sustain my pace until the major climb coming up at the end of the first third of the course. The steepness of that climb was a license to power walk. This thought took me back to practice weekend once again, to the exact moment where I made the decision to upgrade my challenge from the Olympic distance to the Long Course. It was on the first day, after I had just proven to myself that I could complete both the swim and the bike legs of the Long Course back to back. While taking a shower, I was wondering how, being hardly able to stand after the bike ride, I'd be able to go on running for another 13.1 miles after that, let alone for one mile. But as I was drying off, one of the guys from the IronTeam (for whom the Wildflower Long Course was only a practice triathlon on their path to full iron-distance glory) gave me the final argument I needed: "Keep in mind that you can always power walk the run. In fact, on some of those climbs, you'd be stupid not to."

The glittering lake fizzled out into one last appendix of water, with dead trees sticking up from the surface like drowning hands. The rolling hills were not relenting, and the trail was littered with rocks that forced you to keep scanning the ground ahead of every step. The sun was beating down hard and, with little shade to speak of, was starting to become a factor of exhaustion. I had been making hydration a priority, but my stomach was disagreeing with the notion of drinking and running. Eventually the steep climb I was waiting for came up, and I started walking.

The climb was not easy. Power walking went out the window. I was simply hiking at a measured pace, feeling mildly queasy and wondering how much energy I still had left in me, and which, between willpower and carbohydrates, was in most dire need of replenishment. I took out some energy chews from my Fuel Belt and let them melt inside my mouth. I could hear in the distance the cheers from the aid station at the top of the hill, but realized that it had absolutely no cheerful effect on me. I was tired. Very tired. I reached the aid station and languidly poured two glasses of water on my head. It didn't help.

A sharp towering descent was next. The kind you might see in San Francisco as you stand on the north side of Pacific Heights, the hill dominating the Marina, except the descent in front of me had dirt and rocks instead of asphalt and sidewalks. Knowing the current state of my quads - the muscles that contain the brakes you need to hold you back from falling forward as you step downhill - I decided not to subject my knees to the impact of a carefree hop down that steep hill. I walked down instead, soon finding myself at the bottom of the Long Valley, a wide rightward arc of dried mud where you get to slowly climb back up to the altitude you just came down from. It made sense to resume running then. Except I couldn't. I was depleted.

With approximately 8 miles to go, I was convinced that the race was over for me. That I'd be walking the whole way back to the finish line, and, having then walked over two thirds of the run course, that I would remember this day somberly ever after, as some sort of abject anticlimax. I mentally cycled through all the reasons that had pushed me to sign up for this, and felt like an impostor who simply got what he deserved. I started bargaining with myself. I understood the distal logic of how training for something like this would, for many complicated and personal reasons, incite family, friends, and even total strangers to open their wallets and make a donation, but the proximal logic of my finishing this race victoriously eluded me. After all, I had already turned my training effort into a leading national fundraiser, and cancer was going to be eating some dirt regardless of how I finished this race. Could these last few miles matter more than the hundreds I had covered over the last few months? Did I not train hard enough, did I not challenge myself enough to warrant the inspiration behind each donation? Would I be betraying my donors if I didn't have a strong finish? Would they feel like asking for their money back? Would they prefer to hear that I pushed myself so hard trying that I passed out, or worse? Should I have stuck to the Olympic distance, knowing full well that, given my current level of fitness, I couldn't have called it an endurance challenge, and wouldn't that have betrayed my solidarity towards cancer patients and survivors? ...They say that training for a cause makes it easier to make it through the rough patches - and it does; but it is also what makes it harder... What I refused to confront was that the only person who would really care about a weak finish was me, that I might not forgive myself, and - perhaps what scared me most - that not forgiving myself would be far worse than a weak finish, and would only serve to support the notion that happiness wasn't compatible with my passionate quest for idealism and excellence.

As I was battling those negative thoughts, a more prosaic matter, now far more pressing and long overdue, was suddenly brought back to my attention: the aid station at the end of mile 5 was now in sight, and, behind it, a porta-potty. The person in line before me wasn't wearing any race tags or numbers, but, since I was unable to convince even myself that I was still in a race, I wasn't going to try to convince a volunteer, who had been generously helping all day, that my time was more important. I waited patiently for my turn, using the opportunity to stretch my quads.

I felt a little better on the way out, and I started walking again, this time at a brisk pace. Another one of my teammates jogged past me and said hello. It was a man twice my age, the quiet type, also with mid-long hair, whose wave had started the race a full 50 minutes after mine, and who had caught up with me somehow. I continued walking behind him, picking up the pace and starting to power walk. He was easy to keep up with. He seemed exhausted. But he was running, and I wasn't. So I started running again, deliberately trailing him at a distance for a while, to make sure I actually had something left in me, and that he did too. His example inspired me, and was succeeding in unlocking what my own thoughts couldn't. I decided to catch up to him.

I told him what had happened to me on the run course, and how his example had inspired me to start running again. This compliment energized him back as well, and we both kept running steadily side by side, even picking up some speed. We started chatting and got into a rhythm. At some point he felt he was holding me back, and that I shouldn't be waiting for him; I explained that maybe right now I seemed stronger, but that, with all the volatility that had already occurred in that race, there was no telling what might happen one mile later, or even one minute later. So we slowed down a bit and then picked up the pace again, and later he told me that he really would have stopped running if he had been on his own. It became tacitly clear that we stabilized each other, and that we'd both be better off sticking together. And so together we ran the remainder of the race, only walking when it made aerobic sense to do so on the uphills.

The race became cheerful and lighthearted again. We laughed as we gave volunteers our permission to sprinkle us with water hoses, and we poured more glasses of water on our heads, wondering whether this would make us look any more embattled on the finish line than we already were. A volunteer was carrying a platter of fresh orange slices. I sunk my teeth into one and wasn't too surprised to find out that those had never tasted so good. When the course took us back inside the park and past the campgrounds, we came across a large crowd of teammates shouting our names. I asked for more, spinning my fist in the air, and like an orchestra responding to a conductor, the rumble of cheers got louder and louder into a stirring crescendo.

On mile 9 we reached the portion of the course that we hadn't run during practice weekend. The Pit of Despair, as it is sometimes known, is a one-mile downhill stretch at the end of which you turn around and climb back up the exact same way you came from. It's not particularly steep, but it does seem a bit pointless and makes you wish there were at least a purpose for that detour, like some magical item to collect at the bottom, or a special treat customized to each athlete's liking - for me, a jar of organic blueberries! Instead, the only excitement at the turn-around point is that you get to walk on the blue carpet that electronically acknowledges that you carried the timing tag strapped around your ankle all the way down to the bottom. Well, I suppose you can call it a magic carpet.

There is in fact some cruel genius behind the design of the Pit of Despair. Its purpose is to give you a one-time radar sweep of all the runners who are within two miles of you in either direction. As you enter the pit, you can see those exiting it at the same time, who are exactly two miles ahead of you, and, as you progress into the pit, you get to see all those who are ahead of you by anywhere from two miles down to zero. Then as you climb back out, you get to see all those who are behind you by anywhere from zero to two miles. It's easy to see how, in any two-person race, the follower might despair at seeing how far ahead the leader is, or, worse even, go all the way down the pit, hopes rising as the leader is not encountered for a while, and then seeing these hopes dashed as the bottom is reached without having encountered the leader, meaning the leader had widened a lead of more than two miles by the time the follower entered the pit.

We made it to the top of Lynch Hill, and prepared to descend towards the lake for the third time today, this time on our feet. The two of us were going to finish the race, and this hope had now become a certitude. It was a solemn moment that I hadn't imagined I'd be sharing with someone else, but I was glad I was. We kept running down Lynch Hill at a steady pace, holding back a bit as we were both trying to be careful with our knees. I felt no pain, but the inkling of something that, if left unattended, could potentially have me wake up in pain the next day. So we talked about how the first thing we would do after the finish line would be to go stand inside the lake to soak our legs; the lake temperature was 61 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning, and it was probably still cold enough to act as an ice bath. The ground flattened under us, and we entered the finish chute in silence. The flags of all the countries in the world were lined up around us. I found the French flag by chance and winked at it. A few seconds later, victoriously, we crossed the finish line. Mission accomplished.

The next few moments were a bit blurry, as we were assaulted on all sides. One volunteer rushed down to my ankle to unstrap and collect my timing tag. Another handed me a wet towel while a third one placed a medal around my neck. Teammates were here for us too, and one of them was waiting to interview me on camera. Also present was a set of cancer survivors hardly older than me, who had given us solid evidence that they wouldn't be alive today without TNT, and who had just completed the race as a relay team. Someone wearing a TNT jersey then came up to me, saying my name and attempting to introduce himself, thinking I didn't know him; but I recognized his face from his fundraising website and told him his name; the top two Wildflower fundraisers in the nation then shook hands and congratulated each other on a job well done.

Remembering the advice of my coaches, I headed downstairs to the transition area to drink some chocolate milk while it was still time for the all-important post-workout muscle repair process to occur. I could barely walk and, with every step taking so much effort, planning my route efficiently suddenly became very important; I wondered whether this was what being old felt like. My running partner had already started heading down towards the lake, and I thought I'd first make a stop at the medical tent to ask for some ice packs. I told the blonde volunteer at the door about my plan to go stand in the lake and that I'd like the ice packs to be strapped to my legs somehow, so she started looking for some plastic wrap. There was a cluster of beds towards the back of the tent, where the casualties of the race, lying pale and almost lifeless, were being treated for dehydration and other serious ills. The volunteer found what she was looking for and had me take a seat in front of her. We worked together to get the right quantity of ice cubes into the bags, then I got to silently watch her roll the plastic wrap around my knees with endearing application. The mild hesitation of these delicate childish hands around my hairy muscular legs was amusing, and for a moment made me feel like one of those male soldiers with wounds minor enough to have preserved their dignity intact in the eyes of female nurses.

Maybe one day I will return to settle the score with the Long Valley, or maybe I won't. Either way, it won't really matter because, without having stalled in the Long Valley today, without having needed rescue, and rescued back, my finish would have meant a little bit less. And this individualist wouldn't have been celebrating the power of two people accomplishing more together than they could have separately. The power of two. I stepped into the lake with my ice packs around my knees, under the shade of the inflatable start gate under which the race had started this morning. The water was still cold, but different words came to mind: refreshing, soothing, and therapeutic. My knees were going to be just fine the next day. I stood in the water for half an hour, occasionally talking to nearby teammates, but mostly just relaxing and happily reflecting on all that had happened today, a peaceful smile on my face.

Joe Karam, Long Course Triathlete, signing off.

Appendix

I completed the race in 08 hours, 05 minutes, and 12 seconds.

The race clock on the finish line picture started 15 minutes before my wave.

Overall Time (Distance: 70.3 miles): 08:05:12

Swim Time (Distance: 1.2 miles): 00:37:33

T1 Time (Swim-to-Bike Transition): 00:04:54

Bike Time (Distance: 56 miles): 04:28:51

T2 Time (Bike-to-Run Transition): 00:01:47

Run Time (Distance: 13.1 miles): 02:52:07

Training Update

Last week, after a practice triathlon covering approximately half of our target distance, we started easing into the tapering phase of our training, where minimal physical exertion is in order, so as to replenish muscles and spirit in time for race day...

This is it, folks! After three months of rigorous training, next Saturday, May 1, is the day. The 2010 Wildflower Long Course Triathlon. My very first triathlon race. A triathlon with a mission, where I'll be your personal courier, symbolically transporting the sum of all your donations across 70.3 miles of water, road and trail, and, if all goes well, across the finish line. Wish me luck, and check the following links if you'd like to learn more about the race.

- Course descriptions, maps and altitude profiles

- Video overview of last year's Pro Men's race

- Video overview of last year's Pro Women's race

Fundraising Update

Twelve thousand dollars and counting... Who would have thought? From the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of all cancer patients and researchers anxious for a cure, THANK YOU to all of you who have already so generously donated to this great cause, and for all your words of encouragement that have transported me through my training. Everyone wishes cancer away, but you and I are making an actual difference, and the TNT triathletes are on track towards raising two million dollars around the 2010 Wildflower Triathlon alone. Once again, thank you for joining the fight against cancer. Together we will beat this atrocity.

Everyone,

I recently returned from a challenging and inspiring weekend spent training and camping with about a hundred of my triathlon teammates three hours south of the San Francisco Bay Area, around Lake San Antonio, the actual site of the legendary Wildflower Triathlon, in which we will be participating on May 1st, wearing the purple colors of Team-in-Training (TNT), the charity sports training program of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We are now entering the second, more brutal half of the season, and I'd like to take this opportunity to update you on the progress of my training and of our fundraising.

Training Update

My disciplined training regimen has been paying off, and I have decided to raise the stakes and upgrade my athletic challenge: instead of participating in the Wildflower Olympic Distance Triathlon (swim: 0.93 mi / 1.5 km, bike: 24.85 mi / 40 km, run: 6.21 mi / 10 km), I will be participating in the Wildflower Long Course Triathlon (swim: 1.2 mi / 1.9 km, bike: 56 mi / 90 km, run: 13.1 mi / 21.1 km / half-marathon), one of the more difficult half-ironman-distance triathlons out there, yet one that now appears within my reach, having completed both of its swim and bike legs on the first day of our practice weekend, and most of its run leg on the second day. Of course, doing the three legs of the race back-to-back will be a completely different animal, but, with five more weeks to train and prepare with the expert guidance of our coaches, I am confident that this is the appropriate level of challenge for me at this point.

I joined the TNT triathlon team mostly with a runner's background. Last Thanksgiving, right before the biggest meal of the year, I was able to run my first half-marathon in the quiet suburban streets of Mountain View, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, half an hour south of San Francisco. This accomplishment put me on top of the world for a few days, especially since I had been training entirely on my own and, for the first time after a couple of less successful attempts over the previous few years, had been able to remain injury-free long enough to reach my goal (losing 20 pounds over the course of 2009 certainly helped, but I'll take credit for that as part of the achievement). A few days after my half-marathon run however, after the euphoria had turned into quiet satisfaction, something didn't feel quite right: what came over me was a feeling of missed opportunity, the nagging notion that these 13.1 miles (and the hundreds that led up to them) could have been about more than just me, and could have made a difference in other people's lives without taking anything away from my own celebration of life.

From an athletic perspective I also did not want to push my luck and felt that I needed coached training before raising my mileage any further. TNT, which I had learned about from various sources, and had donated to several times in the past, was just what I was looking for. As for deciding between a triathlon and a marathon, the choice was an easy one: the cross-training nature of a triathlon promised greater overall health benefits, a good hedge against overuse injuries, and a great excuse to return to swimming and biking after a five-year hiatus.

My swimming background is mostly recreational, most of my open-water swimming experience coming from the warmer summer waters of the Mediterranean, though I have also been swimming pool laps since an early age as well, sometimes aggressively; how could I forget that one summer sunset in Lebanon when, still in my pre-teens, I was racing to finish my 5th kilometer of the day in an Olympic-sized salt-water pool whose water level was dropping by the minute as it was being emptied for its scheduled cleaning, and from which I feared being ordered out any second by some arabic admonition that would have sounded just as blurry as all the things my goggled myopic eyes couldn't discern?

These past few weeks I've typically been swimming every Monday and Wednesday on my own, and every Saturday with the team. At first I started doing my solitary swims at the Googleplex in Mountain View, in one of our outdoors infinite pools. Also known as water treadmills, these tiny rectangular pools allow you to swim against a current of adjustable strength. This worked well when our assignments were as simple as "swim for 30 minutes." In fact, as I was able to experience first-hand, infinite pools offer a much more gratifying endurance workout than regular pools, and the 30 minutes are sure to feel like a lot longer. Because you are not hitting a wall and turning around every few seconds, your rhythm is unbroken and far more regular, which creates a much tougher workout for your arms because they have no respite whatsoever. At the same time it really allows you to enter into an uninterrupted breathing cycle and a mental state of flow, and if you can pace yourself and not go too fast too soon, you might find yourself progressively building up speed and finishing the session swimming against a rather fast current while still feeling physically strong and mentally powerful.

As the solitary swim workouts became more structured, with assigned drills expressed no longer in time durations but in multiples of pool lengths, I started going to our YouTube swimming pool in San Bruno, just south of San Francisco. Oddly enough, every time I am there, regardless of the time of day, I seem to have all three 25-meter lanes to myself. I only need one of course, but it's nice to know that even if someone walks in, I'll still have my own lane. Often I am in there completely alone, without even a lifeguard, since the water is shallow everywhere and cameras provide video surveillance to the person manning the gym's front desk. This spa-like experience, which begins as soon as you enter the unexpectedly comforting locker room area, and from which the only thing missing is an open roof and a star-lit sky, is a rare privilege that I plan to continue taking advantage of after the triathlon. In the meantime, the various sequences of drills have been adding up to longer and longer distances, and each swim session is now approaching 3,000 meters.

You would think that, given the distances I am now swimming several times a week, the swim leg of the event should be a no-brainer. That's what I thought too, until we did our first open-water swim a couple of Saturdays ago. Let's just say I am glad I didn't miss this key workout, even it meant returning from a trip to New York earlier than I would have liked. To be sure, there have been many firsts this season, and the triathlon training is certainly succeeding in pushing me outside of my comfort zone in more ways than I had ever anticipated, but few things will surpass that first open-water swim in the murky and near-freezing waters of the San Francisco Bay, where even the wetsuits we were wearing (my first time in a wetsuit too) would fail to shield us from the cold. When your breath is shortened to the point that you can hardly swim more than five strokes at a time before needing to stop to catch your breath (and even then never be able to quite catch it), all your diligent pool training goes out the window; all those drills to get the most out of each stroke suddenly feel quite pointless when being able to swim a stroke at all would make so much more difference.

Fortunately, swimming in Lake San Antonio, the site of the actual race event, was a reassuring experience, as the water turned out to be much cleaner, clearer, and warmer. After about a minute of adjusting to the temperature, my breathing settled into its usual aerobic pattern, and not only were my strokes fluid, but I also caught myself optimizing them without having to consciously think about it; the pool drills were worth it after all. Yet to be fully ready for open-water racing I'll have to further practice incorporating "sighting" - the art of looking up in front of me every few strokes (now with contact lenses and water-tight goggles) to make sure I am still heading in the right direction (there are no blue lines at the bottom of the lake, and the water is dark anyway so there is nothing to see). Another smart thing to learn prior to a triathlon is legless swimming, for which your lower body will thank you during the ensuing biking and running; incidentally this works out well for me, being unenthusiastic about leg kicks in the first place and already used to relying almost exclusively on my arms for forward swimming motion. By the time May rolls around, the lake waters will be even warmer but, a blessing inside the lake, those warmer temperatures will also be a curse as we bike and run on the hills around it...

The red Diamondback 1999 Crestview hybrid bicycle that had so faithfully transported me across the Stanford campus for five years (with no helmet - I too was once young and foolish, and lucky too) had been sitting neglected in a corner of my Silicon Valley apartment for the next five, next to a floor pump dying to replenish its deflated tires, and a Google-branded helmet that had been given to all employees as a side gift to a holiday bonus, supposedly because it was in the company's own best interest to protect its most precious assets - our brains. I had tried dusting off my hybrid once to maybe start biking to work, only to discover that spending most of the commute dodging speeding cars entering and exiting a number of freeways had nothing good to offer. Plus, my rubber gear shifters had started melting and oozing glue, there was no bike repair shop in my neighborhood, and starting to research car bike racks was a daunting prospect that hardly seemed worth it and quickly fell to the bottom of my to-do list and into the abyss of oblivion. Until I signed up for TNT, and had exactly 36 hours to figure out how to transport my bike to the 7:45am Saturday kick-off training session. A testament to the magic of deadlines, the car bike rack was purchased and assembled in an hour, opening a world of possibilities: I could now bike anywhere my car could go.

Five years of college campus biking had cemented my basic comfort with bicycles as an adult; bikes were king at Stanford and you had to learn to sprint between two far-away classrooms while navigating chaos, epitomized by the so-called "intersection of death," a busy pedestrian intersection where it was understood that adding stop signs would not prevent bikers from dashing into the intersection without looking or slowing, often colliding into each other (on a recent visit, I noticed that a stroke of genius imported from Europe had converted that intersection into a roundabout - kids have it too easy these days). Still, on-campus biking failed to prepare me for a number of things, such as sharing the road with cars, the etiquette of sharing a bike lane with other cyclists, the confidence and necessary skills to let go of the brakes on steep downhill slopes, tire-changing skills, knowledge of equipment, and, of prime importance in a triathlon and any long-distance ride, all things related to eating and drinking while riding.

These past few weeks I've typically been spinning on a stationary gym bike every Tuesday on my own, and going on increasingly long outdoors rides with the team every Saturday, usually after a swim. We're now also preceding our Thursday night track workouts with a bike ride as well (back-to-back workouts from different athletic disciplines are known as "brick workouts," and are now becoming an increasingly frequent and crucial part of our training.) Spinning indoors has been relatively easy for me, having routinely practiced it in the last few years as part of my cardio workouts, but I still managed to surprise myself last week when, simply by trusting and following the workout listed on my schedule, I spun uninterruptedly for 2 hours at 80% of my maximum heart rate, twice as long as I had ever done. As for the outdoors bike rides, we quickly moved up from riding just a few miles at a time to 10, 20, 30, 40 miles... Of course, our longest adventure so far has been the 56-mile bike leg of the Wildflower Long Course itself, with the infamous "Nasty Grade," a 5-mile-long 1000-feet-high climb waiting for you after you've already been pedaling on rolling hills for 41 miles.

The coaches have been very good at progressively ramping up the difficulty of our rides, and the sceneries we've encountered in the process have been a feast. As our rides stretch to cover longer and longer distances every week, each of them becoming the longest or toughest bike ride I have ever been on, our pedaling has been taking us increasingly west of Highway 280, right around the San Andreas fault line, one time near the aptly-named Crystal Springs water reservoir (which had served as a backdrop to a beautiful outdoors wedding I had attended as best man last summer), or, more typically, further south and west of Stanford, in the quasi-virgin forests that cover Portola Valley, the cartoon-looking small town of Woodside, and other such oases of respectful civilization scattered across the mountains separating the Bay from the Pacific Ocean.

I've been living in this region of the world for almost a decade now, and have many times sought the escape of a drive up and down these narrow and windy forest roads, but experiencing them from behind the metal and glass of my black Volkswagen 2002 Jetta, even after rolling down the windows to let in the scent of Eucalyptus trees, has always felt too rushed, too distant, too borrowed, too teasing, too incomplete, especially when driving side by side with cyclists relentlessly climbing 8% grades lasting several miles or charging downhill at full speed in the opposite direction - cyclists that you try to dismiss as crazy, masochistic, and suicidal, but whose chutzpah you secretly admire, perhaps even envy. I did attempt a bike ride into the flatter parts of those woods once during my last spring quarter at Stanford, but a flat tire took me by surprise deep inside the forest, and, not having the equipment or know-how to change my tire at the time, I had to walk my bike several miles back to campus, enjoying the promenade and the heart-warming camaraderie of countless cycling strangers who unexpectedly stopped and tried to help, but nonetheless feeling thwarted and foolish. I graduated from college and never had a chance to return on that forest road since, at least not outside of a car.

Imagine my glee last Saturday when, leading a pack of cycling triathletes-in-the-making, I boldly took on the road that had defeated me five years ago, went deep into the woods, uninterruptedly climbed 1400 feet of elevation on the daunting 3.5-mile long 6%-to-10% grade of the Old La Honda Road, and found myself, beaming, on Skyline Boulevard, above a forest clearing that I knew all too well; that forest clearing, with its lone gas station and its wooden restaurant, was none other that the one at the top of Route 84, the road where I had seen so many crazy cyclists climbing and descending - and now I was about to ride Route 84 downhill just like them, after having made it to the top climbing a road just as hard! I had none of their flashy attire and carbon fiber road bikes, but I had the same fire in the heart - certainly on the uphills (where it's not uncommon for me to pass and widen my lead over a great many road bikes) and increasingly so on the downhills (where my confidence continues to grow every day, as I learn to negotiate the spectrum of fine lines between paranoia, prudence, courage, boldness, and folly). As a wise cyclist eloquently told me recently, people tend to overestimate the importance of the bike, and to underestimate the importance of the engine riding on it.

I consider myself an endurance athlete, as most aerobic cardiovascular activities that tend to wear people out within an hour have always made me feel like a champion. I don't just enjoy the "having run", the "having biked", the "having swim"; I also enjoy the "running," the "biking," the "swimming" themselves, especially when it's tough, when it's uphill, when it's prolonged, when the heart rate goes up and the breathing gets loud, when others give up and pause to catch their breath. My genes agree with me on this: 23andMe reports that my ACTN3 gene, key in determining muscle performance, has the TT genotype, which leads the clinical report to glibly label me as an "Unlikely Sprinter," explaining, less negatively: "No working copies of alpha-actinin-3 in fast-twitch muscle fiber. Few world-class sprinters have this genotype, but many world-class endurance athletes do." My Parisian schoolmates who saw me growing up might also remember me lingering in the lower percentiles of most physical education activities, with the glaring exception of endurance running, where I quickly worked my way to the top percentiles. Speaking of Paris, having resisted the very strong social pressure to start smoking during my teen years, and having never accepted as little as one cigarette whiff, was one of the best things I ever did for my lung capacity and aerobic fitness.

I'll conclude this training update with a slightly more cerebral account of a memorable Saturday brick workout: the "Ride-and-Tie" race. In the olden days, when two people with only one horse needed to travel quickly, one person would run on foot while the other would ride the horse without waiting for the runner; after a while, the rider would stop, tie the horse to a tree, and start running; eventually the first runner would catch up with the rested horse, untie it and start riding it, passing the runner, and eventually tying the horse again, and so on and so forth. Though Ride-and-Tie is still practiced as a modern-day sport, our triathlon team played a modified version of it, using mountain bikes instead of horses, two people per bike.

A few miles into the race, my Ride-and-Tie partner and I started bouncing off some strategy ideas. First, we realized that, unlike a horse, the bike does not need to rest, and therefore has no business lying on the ground while both of us are huffing and puffing on our feet; it made sense to never have more than one of us running at any given time and to always have one of us "rest" on the bike; the way to achieve this was to have the biker get off the bike only a few feet ahead of the runner, then directly hand him the bike as if it were a relay bâton. With this more structured configuration, it soon became apparent that the speed of our team was only as fast as the speed of the runner, and that the speed of the biker was in fact completely irrelevant; this meant the runner should be going as fast as possible, and that the biker should be focusing on recuperating. We also found that switching roles as often as possible helped further optimize that strategy: the runner would only be running for a short amount of time, and could therefore afford to run very fast and almost be sprinting during the entire duration of his run. Of course, when he later becomes the biker, he would only have a short time to recuperate, but most of the recuperation needed for the next sprint seemed to happen in the first few seconds of the recovery period anyway, so the best time for the biker to hand off the bike was shortly after feeling more rested than the runner appeared tired. As we implemented and progressively refined our strategy, it wasn't long before we started catching up with other teams who had been outrunning us earlier, and, passing them one after the other, we ended up winning the race!

Fundraising Update

Thanks to your generosity, you and I have now raised more than $10,000 against cancer, an impressive milestone that surpasses the ambitious goal of $7,250 I had originally set, and far exceeds the minimum requirement of $2,900. Though this figure makes me the #1 fundraiser in the Silicon Valley Triathlon team (with or without the matching dollars from Google), you may think that this is nothing more than a slightly bigger-than-usual drop in a still very large bucket. However, rest assured that, on their end, each and every one of my triathlon teammates is also raising thousands of dollars, as are the thousands of other TNT participants in chapters all over the nation, preparing not only for the Wildflower Triathlon but also for countless other endurance events happening throughout the year. Indeed, as the purple waves of TNT athletes cross their respective finish lines one after the other, millions of dollars are unleashed against cancer every season.

As a practical example of the impact of TNT, Gleevec, hailed as one of the most significant breakthrough drugs against Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) and cancer in general, was developed by a researcher funded by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and, therefore, by TNT. Now, with Gleevec, more than 95% of newly-diagnosed CML patients survive more than 5 years with a good quality of life. There is no question that cancer is losing ground, but while much has been achieved, even more remains to be done.

Just as I have raised the stakes in my athletic challenge and will now be attempting the Wildflower Long Course, a half-ironman-distance triathlon, I am raising the stakes in my fundraising goal, setting the new target at $12,000. The Google match quota has already been exhausted (unless you are a Googler yourself), but with the participation of a larger number of you, even with small donations, we can still do it. I hope you will join us.

Our motivations as donors or as race participants may often be pedestrian and may not necessarily carry the deeply personal flame of retribution, but the cancer patients and survivors I have been meeting these past few weeks have never needed to test the nobility of my motivations before choosing to call me a "hero" - a label I had never heard applied to me before. If I am indeed their hero, it is not because I will be swimming, biking, and running, but because the fundraising effort I have been leading will be advancing the quest for a cure, and so it is my turn to transmit the message and call you a hero for making a donation, no matter how small - a hero not only to these patients, but also perhaps - though I certainly hope not - to you, me, or any of our loved ones who at some point may have to face the consequences of a single genetic malfunction in a single cell of our body, enough to turn that once-orderly cell into the most indiscriminate and devastating of terrorists.

Dear friends,

I am training to complete an Olympic-distance Triathlon (1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, 10 km run) as a member of Team In Training (TNT), the charity sports training program of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS). The funds you and I raise together will help fight blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma) and, indirectly, other types of cancer and even HIV/AIDS; indeed, all these diseases share common properties at the cellular level, the molecular level, and especially the genetic level, where oncology research is focusing much of its attention nowadays.

The TNT program alone trains over 5% of all participants in U.S. marathon races and other endurance events. Through their fundraising efforts over the last two decades, TNT athletes have collectively raised over a billion dollars against cancer, and are making a real difference in the lives of patients and in the quest for a cure.

To participate in the Wildflower Triathlon on May 1, 2010, I need to raise a minimum of $2,900. Normally, 75% of the amount you donate would be going towards cancer research and patient services, while the remaining 25% would be used to cover various overhead costs, including the cost of my training and participation in the event. Having you pay for these overhead costs does not sit well with me however, and I have decided to cover them in full out of my own pocket ($725, or 25% of $2,900), thereby ensuring that 100% of your donation goes towards the fight against cancer. Better yet: because I have the good fortune of working at Google, a company that will match dollar-for-dollar up to $3,000 of the amount you and I raise together, up to 200% of your donation ($2 for every $1 you give) will be going to cancer patients and researchers.

To keep my fundraising challenge on par with that of other TNT participants who may have to raise the full $2,900 from sources other than themselves and without the luxury of a generous employer magically doubling every dollar they raise, I have decided to set my personal fundraising goal at $7,250 (($2,900 + $725) * 2). I hope you will join me and Google towards meeting and exceeding this worthy goal.

Please make a (tax-deductible) donation now if you can. No amount is too small, and you can always decide to give again at a later date, but the faster we can get that total figure up, the clearer my obligation to do my part and not let you down, as I promise to think of every donor (along with any patient you'd like me to honor) as someone waiting for me at the end of every training swim, every training ride, every training run, every yoga, pilates, and weightlifting workout in between, and, of course, at the finish line of the Triathlon itself on May 1.