January 13, 2013, I completed the marathon. As proof, I include the pictures below of myself during the race in varying degrees of shock and trauma. Please note - the pics are not photoshopped - not that I didn't try. If I knew how to photoshop the pics, I would have removed the 80+ year old runners (rock on!) who sneaked into every picture of me and I would have changed my skin color to a shade of not so brillantly white.

The temperate on race day was ridiculously hot. Somewhere around 86 degrees at mid-morning, high-humidity, and the runners were dropping like flys all along the way. One of these "flys" I accidently ran into as somewhere around mile-3 she stopped suddenly in front of me, and, because I was busy talking and looking everywhere but in front of me, I ended up colliding and running right over her. Oppps (but turns out she was okay). So, after that incident and after tripping over one or two curbs at the toll booth going into the first park, we eventually made it to Magic Kingdom around mile-6.

We ran through the castle at Magic Kingdom, with trumpets blaring upon my arrival at the gate (I had to remind the trumpeters to play as soon as I crossed the drawbridge).

Both here and throughout the race, as you can see, I was folllowed and cheered on by a group of enthusiastic, ululating supporters:

Just look how excited everyone is for me (even Lacey's getting into it).

"Whooaahh, yes, yes, it's me ... Please no need to gush. I'm a runner just like everyone else." Big hit, I am ...

You will observe my economical, organic and homemade race nutritional system that I personally developed for this race. I didn't resort to using expensive, over-hyped, commercialized, synthetic gels and other conventional products as fuel for the marathon. No, instead, (with a nod to the industrious honeybee) I pinned several Ziplock, snacked sized bags to my hips, filled with dried blueberries, craisins, pomegranetes and raisins. I may have taken some ribbing for this - what with the noise all those plastic bags rustling through the wind as I ran, but it got the job done.

I also took a fair amount of indecent jokes for an emptied out American Crew hair paste jar I emptied and replaced with Bag Balm to apply ... where needed ... just before the race started and perhaps during the marathon. The question I hadn't thought of was where I was going to go to put the bag Bag Balm on. All's well that ends well, but it would have helped to have realized beforehand that there is no privacy when you are running a race with 27,000 other people or that medic stations provide vasaline and such as all along the way.

My favorite part of the race was Animal Kingdom (mile-16), the pic below was taken just after climbing Mt. Everest. Piece of cake.

I never hit "the wall" or the "bite me zone" that everyone warns marathoners about ... I was in a good mood the whole time and never considered stopping. Great crowds, a great Team in Training crew I ran with and all the things to see while running around Disney kept my mind off the miles, the heat, the humidity, etc. What really helped was the coaching of Meg and Danny. I've already asked Meg to be my therapist. Danny cracked me up and kept me going - both running and talking - all 27.75 miles (he really does talk as much as I do). Anyway, I never went off the deep end, but I think the photographer at Hollywood Studioes thought I was going all berzerker on him as I veered off course for the pic. He kinda fell over backward just after I took the pic, but I just wanted to get a close-up pic.

As the morning went on, the temperature continued to rise, which made the race increasingly difficult - especially for peeps like me who were running just the Wednesday before in a foot or so of snow and 15-degree weather. As say this, because I have no clue what race this guy was running, 'cause it wasn't the race I was in.

Finally, we approached the finish-line at Epcot, and I was more focused now than at any point on the course. Eye of the tiger like.

Meanwhile, while Lacey and I are running the race, our Mom was completing a marathon of her own. She stood at the finish-line, holding her spot against thousands, sheltering her iPad for overheating, withstanding the hip-hop and dance music blaring at the stack of speakers next to her for over 3 hours. This was the only point where I saw her during the race (missed her at Magic Kingdom and on Main Street where Lacey saw her. Anyway, there's Danny pointing her out in the crowd (that or he was laughing at the jibberish I was saying at this point as dillerium started to set-in from the heat).

And finally, I made it to the finish line.

Well, almost ...

There we go!

The race was fun. And I have been bragging like crazy about accomplishing this endurance event (its gotten so bad, I spent 5 minutes yesterday telling 'Linda' the cashier at the grocery store about all the sordid details of the marathon).

But the race itself, and crossing the ‘finish-line,’ was not the end. We ran to help find a cure for cancer. We put ourselves through this ordeal to help support people –like my Aunt Theresa - who are currently battling this terrible disease. In this sense, the race does not end until a cure has been found.

The best news isn't that I finished a marathon (it's up there, but not the best). The best news I received recently is that my Aunt's most cancer screening yesterday showed no cancer present!!! This is the accomplishment we all can be proud of and need to support. She would not have reached this day, if it wasn't for people like you who have given to Team in Training so the experts can continue developing cutting edge treatments and keep making medical advances to stop this disease.

So, if you haven't had a chance to donate yet, please do so now. If you have already donated, thanks so much!

This last pic is of me just about to cross the finish-line in Epcot. I was definitely relieved and totally stoked I was to complete the race. Disclaimer: I was not celebrating the fact that I just passed the octogenarian (behind me and on my immediate right) whom, I can only assume, started hours before me and ran half the distance I ran.

No proper running clothes with me while away from Albany for Thanksgiving, so this is the outfit Dad made available for me. Running, late night, downtown Jamestown and adajacent communities wasn't my smartest idea.

I spent the week before last at home for Thanksgiving and was sick the entire time. I was hoping to spend more time with my family. As for my sickness, I just now recuperated from the cold. I only missed one (and a half?) day(s) of running, but did not eat well. Unfortunately, I couldn't spend much time with my Aunt Theresa because her immune system is compromised right now, and I didn't want her or any of those who are spending a lot of time with her to get sick.

As many of you know, I am running in honor of my Aunt Theresa, who is currently battling cancer), and in memory of my Grandma Keefer who died from cancer a couple of years ago (I'll post her pic and a blurb about Baba later). Several weeks ago, my Aunt was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. It came as a shock to us all - first because a couple of weeks before this diagnosis we were told she did not have cancer - second because we do not have a history of this type of cancer in our family that we are aware of. To honor my Aunt, share in her struggle and bring some good out of this situation, I decided I would run in her name for LLS and raise funds for cancer research and patient services.

What frustrates me is that I cannot put in words how unique, appreciated and loved my Aunt Theresa is to me and my whole family. Thoughful, fun-loving, the life of the party, a hard-worker, notrious for staying-up late into the night (soooo different from my Mom, her sister, on that point), our family's 'lore master,' devoted to family, the church and homemaking, loves a good laugh - these all accurately describe, but hardly give the real picture of who my Aunt Theresa really is ... and I wish that everyone could know her. So, I find myself everyday telling people I meet - co-workers, friends, other family members, Linda the cashier at Price Chopper and basically anyone I meet about my Aunt, stories about her and my family, her fight and how we are all dealing with this cancer.

And what surprises me is that people listen and not only listen but emphathize. Not that they know my Aunt, but as we talk they tell me about their own loved ones - fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles, brothers, sisters, friends, cousins, co-workers, spouses, grandparents, children, girlfriends and boyfriends, classmates and others they know and love who are facing or have faced cancer. They talk about how unique, special and irreplacable each of these people are to them. I realized that for all of our differences and for everything that makes us unique, we are not alone. We are all in this together.

So, I decided to post a recent pic of my Aunt to give you all a little bit of a better idea of who she is (thanks Mandy for the photo). And in the coming days, I am going to post pictures of your loved ones - with a brief description about each of them - so we can all share a little more each other stories about these great people, all these characters who mean so much to us, their battle with cancer and all the good that has come out of having them in our lives.

Wednesday I had a bunch of tubes stuck down various orifices as part of a check-up I need to go through. I couldn’t eat or drink anything for close to 16 hours. Because of this I didn’t run the 4-miles I was supposed to on Wednesday (also whatever drugs they gave me pretty much made the rest of the day a confusing blur of strange images and memories – owls with chicken feet as just one example – confirming that this wasn’t the best day for me to be out on the road). Anyway, I tried to make-up the lost mileage by running a little over 6 miles on Thursday. All-in-all, I ran 1.5 miles less than I was supposed to this week.

Another gift this week … an upper respiratory infection along with a sore throat and chest from the biopsies taken. Yey! So, I went to Urgent Care and they recommended I take a nasal spray, amongst other things, to help relieve the symptoms. I’ve never used a nasal spray before and I may have overdosed a bit (I kept spraying it into my nose ‘cause I couldn’t hear it “spraying” every time I squirted it up there). Anyway, now I feel like my eyelids are going to be permanently affixed to the top of my eye socket

Lacey, is supposedly sick too – why? I do not know, but I’m sure it is not for as good of an excuse as mine. As you can see from the pic, she’s addicted to medications.

I bought a foam roller, delivered last week, and just broke it out tonight. Ouch! 'nough said.

Zombies are helping me reach my running goals.

Yesterday, I was busy working on Team in Training fundraising stuff, kinda picking-up my house and that sort of stuff. Plus, I needed to run 4 miles in order to stay on my running schedule. By the time I had to run, it was already past midnight.

I really don’t like running. I'd would rather watch TV, sleep or eat ... period. And this late at night, especially. I really didn't want to go, but I figure since I made this commitment, I am going to do everything in my power to stick to the running schedule. This sort of 'suffering' is nothing compared to the grueling schedule cancer patients go through ... or contestants on the Biggest Loser for that matter. So I went for a post-midnight run – and this wasn’t the first time I was running in the middle of the night in the past couple of weeks.

To help motivate me, I've been using an app. for my phone called, "Zombies, Run!" The app tracks my pace, route and mileage as I run, all the while plopping me smack dab in the center of a post-apocalyptic world, ravaged by zombies that I need to out run periodically throughout my workout. Not scary, really, but it does keep my mind off the running.

Tonight's another late night, but no running, just painting, and listening to the presidential debates (speaking of zombies and a post-apocalyptic world). Tomorrow, I need to be up before dawn, run another 4-miles, pick-up a cake in Schenectady and then off to Troy for a Wellness Fair. We'll see if the zombies motivate me enough to get out of bed tomorrow.

Teams are made up of individuals. Without them, there is no team.

Welcome to my Team In Training home page.

I have a mission-to help find cures and more effective treatments for cancers. To accomplish that mission, I’m participating in a sports endurance event as a member of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Team In Training. Like the other members of TNT, I will be raising funds to help find cures and better treatments for leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, myeloma and other cancers. I’m improving the quality of my life by participating and with your support, I can help improve the quality of life for patients and their families as well.

Please make a donation in support of my efforts with Team In Training and help advance the research for cures.