Running for my hero

Racing to Save Lives

Welcome to my Team In Training home page.

Along with many of my coworkers at Hunton & Williams LLP, I'm a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training. We are training to participate in the Ukrops 10K.

All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, and myeloma from taking more lives. It's hard to imagine a cause more worthy than that.

But I have a special reason to be committed to this effort. I am completing this event in honor of my son James, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in March 2007, when he was 9 years old.

Right now, James's cancer is in remission, and he is continuing his chemotherapy. As many of you know, that process is no fun at all. But James is amazingly brave and resilient, and with the help of some outstanding doctors and nurses, he's doing great.

There's an important reason James is doing so well: over many years, many people, just like you, gave money to support expensive and time-consuming blood cancer research. There's no doubt that research saved James's life at the time of his diagnosis, and it continues to give him real hope for a great future. In fact, treatment of ALL is one of the great success stories in cancer research.

But there is a lot of work left to do. Leukemia remains a formidable foe, for James and for thousands of other kids. Even today, with all the progress that has been made, leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under the age of 20.

People like James are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!

Please consider making a donation to support my participation in Team In Training and help advance LLS's mission. Even if you can't make a donation, I hope you will visit my web site often. Be sure to check back frequently to see my progress.

Thanks for your support!

UPDATE 1/30/09: Okay, first of all, you people ROCK. I am rarely left speechless, as most of you know.... but witnessing such great support for James, and for this VERY important cause, I'm pretty much at a loss for words.

Pretty much. :)

James had his latest lumbar puncture on Wednesday. This is a procedure in which they put a chemo drug into his spinal column. He's actually gotten used to this, and as usual, he did stunningly well. The kid humbles me. His numbers remain good, and he is totally ready for the next day's adventure. This weekend I'm taking him to Rascal's, his favorite place on earth.

Meanwhile, training started in earnest today. Although I had a pretty good running gig going a few months ago, I fell off the wagon over the holidays and now I am sadly out of shape. But I think I have potential. The treadmill, which was just starting to fall into disuse == making that awful transition from exercise gear to clothes rack == looked happy to see me. :)

2/9/09 == James is doing great and continues to impress and astound. And my training is going better than I had hoped! I'm just trying to figure out how to add some speed. :)

2/27/09 == One month to go. If I could only get my running pace to match the fundraising pace, I'd be an Olympian. THANK YOU ALL!!

3/20/09 == Well, today is the two-year anniversary of James's diagnosis. What a day that was. I think the only one who wasn't totally freaked out was James. This isn't a day to celebrate victory over leukemia -- that hoped-for day is still a long, long way off. But it certainly is a day to celebrate James. I've never been so in awe of another human being!