WELCOME TO MY TEAM IN TRAINING (TNT) HOME PAGE!

By participating as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) TNT, I am raising funds to help find cures and ensure access to treatments for blood cancer patients. 

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO Donated, Encouraged, Taught Me Something, Shared a Story.  It takes a village (TEAM) to complete a marathon.  One for the history books!   I can't thank the Team in Training coaches enough.  They are 100% awesome.  (Not just 99%).   

I was one of the last few hundred people out of 14,000 to cross the finish line, but I never did this to beat any time record.  Favorite moments were talking with people from all walks of life along the way.  Several folks out there with various body limitations and age limitations were not limited!  They were doing their thing to raise awareness or just because they could.  Inspired me to no end.  My new goal:  Continue to train to be a 90-something marathoner so I can say I came in first for my age range. 

Portland, Oregon - October 4, 2015 

Pam - roommate and travel partner extraordinaire - who knew our 3-hour journey home would turn into an 8-hour ordeal?  We survived TWO marathons together!  

09/19/2015:  Rattlesnake Lake with Deb, 17-mile training

Thank you to everyone for making two consecutive Priceless Yard Sales a whopping success!  You brought me $400 closer to my goal, took home some cool stuff, and made a difference in prolonging the lives of those facing blood cancers.  

(9/5/2015 - sunrise through fog on way to team training)

Why I LOVE LLS.  LLS has helped fund all major research breakthroughs in blood cancer treatments over the past 50 years.  Anyone who knows me knows my daughter is a healthy, now teen survivor of a rare type of lymphoma.  Without the kind of research LLS supports, her life could have ended at age 4.  In the LLS First Connection program, I spoke to a mom of a survivor with my daughter's rare diagnosis.  I was gifted hope, a deep awareness I was not alone, reassurance, a life raft that some "normal" would return to my life eventually.  Years later, I became a First Connection volunteer myself.  

I also had my sense of self rocked by Team in Training volunteer coaches and mentors who are welcoming, encouraging and inclusive.  They brought me from "I can never do that" in 2006 when I trained for a marathon at the peak weight of my life after extreme caregiver stress, to over the years completing several self-designed half marathons (13 miles), an 18, a 20 and a full 26.2-mile solo distance.  I am now walking over 26 miles for all the families affected by leukemias and lymphomas (leukemias being the most common childhood cancer), and several I came to know who are no longer walking the Earth.

I am training to walk the Portland Marathon on October 4, and this will be redemption for me.  My first glorious training with TNT was in 2006 when Carli was an Honored Teammate for the Seattle marathon, and I was unfortunately injured a week prior.  Portland will be my first sanctioned, official endurance event. 

UPDATE

8/22/2015:  My newfound inspiration for those days I don't think I can is this woman, Yanni, who came to UW Arboretum to share her story.  She is living testimony to the power of LLS on people's lives.  She has trained for marathons throughout her cancer treatment.  An LLS-sponsored treatment provided her enough time to get married and watch her toddlers grow into young people.  Even though her body is running out of options, she is currently training for two marathons later in the year.  She told us all:  1)  Life is short.  2)  Dream big.  Go TEAM!

Your donation will help fund treatments that save lives every day; like immnuotherapies that use a person’s own immune system to kill cancer. You may not know it, but every single donation helps save a life with breakthrough therapies such as these.

Patients need these cures and they need your support.

Please make a donation in support of my efforts with Team In Training and help get us all closer to a world without blood cancers.

Thank you!