18 is a lot of miles. But what a good reason to run.

It's weird to see how your thoughts change during the course of marathon training. At the beginning of the season, those big runs seem looming. 16, 18, 20 miles? Somehow an 18 or 20 mile training run seems a whole lot bigger than the 26.2 race day. At least on race day there are tons of people out there cheering. But doing 18 miles on a Saturday morning, just to prepare your body for an even bigger task? Sometimes it's still hard for me to fathom that I go out and run double-digit miles, only to feel achy the next day. There are no medals for training runs, no spectators cheering you on. And yet. We do it. We wake up at 4:00 am, just to be at the Lakefront Path by 5:30 so we can beat the afternoon heat. We fight out 18 miles, because we believe in a cause, and we believe that we can do 26.2.

The last few weeks of training, I've really been thinking about the reason that I run. Last weekend, at our cutback week 12-miler, my teammates and I listened to an especially powerful Mission Moment. (Misson Moments are given by cancer survivors, families of Patient Honorees, or those who have had their lives touched by our mission.) Two fellow TNT participants got up to share their story. A leukemia survivor, she was looking for a way to celebrate her recovery. 26.2 miles fit the bill, and what better way to do it than to fundraise for TNT? However, she didn't want to set out on her journey alone. After pestering everyone she knew to run with her, finally, her husband's good friend agreed. They ran their first marathon together, and a few years later, he is now undergoing chemotheraphy and radiation treatments. And yet I still see him out there, week after week, training for his event. After they spoke, my coach asked all the survivors we have training with us to raise their hands. Over half my team proudly raised their hands up high. I was taken aback. I always knew we had survivors out there with us, but I didn't realize just how many.

My dad and aunt ran 4 marathons with TNT almost a decade ago. In 2001, the first survivors started being able to come out and train for TEAM. Now, just seven years later, nearly half of the participants I see on a daily basis are survivors. The cure rates are soaring higher. It's really unbelieveable to see. I love being a part of something like this. And yet, there are still stories like several of our patient honorees this season. Yesterday, September 6, would have been Fabian's 12th birthday. At our training run, his mom sent up balloons and the team sang "Happy Birthday." We know he was looking down on us, proud of our accomplishments yesterday. We run because there are still stories like Fabian's, and Nicholas (another honoree who lost his fight). And TEAM will keep running until there are no more sad stories. Only happy ones.


Yesterday's 18 miles were full of emotion. When we hit the path at 5:45, all I could think was, "Why did I think that a burrito was a good dinner before a long run?" That thought played over and over in my head for about the first 4 miles. With two good friends beside me, though, we stopped counting every.single.mile and just chatted. It was a beautiful day to be out running, and there was so much to see at the Lakefront yesterday. We saw the setup for Flugtag, a UIC swimming and diving event, and ran part of the way tangled with runners from the 5k Lung Run. The many distractions helped us forget just how many miles we had to conquer.

It wasn't until miles 17 and 18 that we really started to wish it was over. And that's how training goes. You're really strong until you get to the longest distance you've run before. So those 16 were fabulous, but those last 2... well... we were able to keep running because we knew we had to. It didn't hurt to know there was the Patient Honoree Picnic at the end -- with more post-run goodies than I've ever seen.

And because it was such a good run, I won't even talk about the fact that when we were ready to go home, we were parked in by one car in the front, and two in the back. It was that good of a day.