good news!

great news!! keeping this one short and sweet, but i heard a few days ago from my company's HR manager and her friend shelsea is ok! the doctors were wrong and it's not lymphoma. whoohoo! such great news :)

chugging along for shelsea

i've been participating in team in training and raising money for the leukemia and lymphoma society for over a year now, and recently i had one of the most touching experiences that brought me closer to the cause than ever before.

i got in touch with my company's human resources manager last week to find out if we have matching gifts or corporate sponsorship opportunities, and am so glad i did so. not only did she help bring my fundraising goal to the attention of the co-ceos and president of our company, but she even more importantly told me the story of a close friend of hers who is battling lymphoma.

her close friend shelsea was recently diagnosed with lymphoma and is currently fighting a tough battle against the disease. just last week, she was in the hospital having surgery on her lymph nodes to help battle the cancer. while i have never met shelsea, her story is so powerful and i will be so proud to run in her honor on race day, wearing her name on my jersey (yes, that is a picture of me from behind on race day in alaska...hot). these are the people that we're out there running for. no, hill repeats are not enjoyable and sore quads are not exactly a cup of tea, but they are nothing compared to the fight she is fighting. if one more day of sore legs means one more year of shelsea staying out of the hospital, i'll take sore legs every day.

i hope one day i'm able to meet shelsea and tell her in person how moving her story is and how touched i am to have been able to hear it. in the meantime, i will keep chugging along - slowly but surely - until one day we find a cure.

when in rome...

...run like the romans! ok that might not have worked but you see where i'm going with this.

like any good marathoner, i've planned out the next year of my life in terms of races to run, miles to cover, vacations to take while icing my shins and applying body glide like it's my job. which is why lana and i are already getting the wheels turning on participating in the rome marathon in march 2009 (lana, i'm dragging you into this whether you like it or not)! originally i was hoping TNT would participate in the paris marathon (um, awesome) but the latest news is that rome it is. i actually found myself thinking for a second "that sucks, i don't want to go to rome, i'd rather run paris" and then i realized "holy crap katherine you're an idiot, you could run a marathon in ROME."

but then again, four consecutive marathons for a former track team manager who watched her high school friends puke after mile repeats from the comfort of her air conditioned jetta and swore never to voluntarily sweat excessively... that seems like a little much. so to re-convince myself why i'm doing this thing, i read back through this blog and stumpled upon lana's post about the email i sent when i got into the nike women's marathon and realized that running marathons has this crazy way of making people happy despite sore quads and blistered feet, so why should we ever think twice about running one in italy?! plus we're helping fund cancer research and potentially save lives, so that's pretty awesome too.

stepping up my game

i'm back! and this time hopefully it won't be another month before you see another post from me...

last night was the oh-so-nauseating but somehow empowering cat hill repeats workout, through which lana and i successfully managed to kick each others butts for seven high effort repeats up one of central park's beloved hills. as much as my glutes were not a fan (and the 90 degree heat didn't help with the nausea), it was so nice to finally make it to practice!! and to have access to lana's wonderful life advice (lana - just go be a life coach already, it's your calling)

in other news, after two weeks of being a complete waste of space and working far more hours that i signed up for, i'm finally up and RUNNING again! i managed to run saturday, twice sunday, monday and tuesday of this past week and am actually feeling like i can potentially run this marathon in october... eep. sunday i went up to rockefeller state park in westchester and had the pleasure of running next to the entire columbia track team! it's always fun to see someone's cool down look like a 100-meter sprint... guess i have a lot more progress to make in this whole running thing...