Virtual 5-mile Run to Cure Blood Cancers

So as you know, I'm running a 5-mile race with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society later this month, in memory of my friend Caitlin, and in honor of the many patients that LLS helps every day. Leukemia is the most common cancer in children, so Liliana and I are training for this one together!

Saturday is our team's biggest training run in preparation for the race, the full 5 miles. Liliana and I need your support to make it up the West Hartford hills and back to our warm car!

TO PARTICIPATE, YOU CAN:

Make a tax-deductible donation of ANY amount (seriously, if you can only spare $5, it's cool) to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this week and think of us on Saturday morning while you're still cozy in bed or leisurely sipping your coffee. We'll put your name on our stroller and know that you're running with us in spirit, both on Saturday and on race day!

Donate from the link on the right side of this page, or go here: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ctwhv/momintrn14/sstuart

(if you see me in person, I can also process checks and credit cards directly for LLS)

--OR--

Get out of bed at 8 AM Eastern time on Saturday and run a 5-mile loop from your house, regardless of sleep or weather. Cancer doesn't take days off. We can think of each other while we run!

BONUS!

If you're local to the Hartford area and donate $25 or more, I'd be happy to offer you a bottle of Stuart's Own wine as a thank you (pick-up preferred, but we may be able to deliver). I know many of you love it and I'm happy to share a bottle from our wine fridge.

Sorry non-local friends, I can't ship the bottles, but I'll totally have a glass in your honor if you'd like.

Week 6: 4.5 freezing cold miles

So you may have noticed that week 5 is mysteriously missing -- this is what happens when you try to keep up a blog as a parent!  Grammie and Grampa S were up for a visit, so I did my short, 2.5-mile run without Liliana, and then didn't have time to write about it because Liliana and I both came down with colds at the beginning of the week.  It was a rather uneventful run anyhow.  We're both feeling better, though I swear the exhaustion from a cold lingers on forever when you don't get enough sleep to begin with!

We had a great Halloween -- Liliana was in love with her puppy costume and was so excited to wear it out for her first time trick-or-treating.  Dressing up with her reminded me so much of skating on the ice with Caitlin.  Every season, we'd dress up on the Sunday closest to Halloween, usually over warm gear so we wouldn't freeze while we skated.  One year we both dressed up as pirates and didn't even plan it!  The special skate days like those were the ones I loved most because they were just so much fun.  Here's a picture of Caitlin and me during one of those Halloween skates.  I still can't believe she left us nearly three years ago -- I look at these pictures and they seriously feel like just yesterday.  It's a great reminder to me as to why I'm running.

I was definitely more in the mood to go back to bed than run on Saturday.  I'd gotten to bed a bit later than I'd wanted to, and Liliana was up bright and early at 6.  The whiner in me came out, and I moaned and groaned about how impossible it was going to be to run 4.5 miles in the cold, with the threat of rain, when I'd only managed to be well enough for one mid-week run, on next to no sleep.

Thankfully, my husband has the patience of a saint and let me complain it out for an hour.  I don't do caffeinated drinks, so my only real option was to load myself up on sugar, get myself on a sugar high, and hope I could sustain myself through the run. Halloween candy to the rescue!

When I stepped outside as I was getting ready to go, the cold almost hurt.  Silly me didn't learn from our last cold run, and still didn't have anything reasonably appropriate to wear.  I decided to try wearing a lightweight fleece jacket, and bundled Liliana up in her winter coat, hat, mittens and blanket.  I wish I'd been awake enough to think to take a picture.  She looked so snuggly in her stroller!

Our coach said she thought the route would be less hilly than our last runs, but that was terribly inaccurate.  I think it may have been worse.  I've found that when stroller running, any significant hill just kills me.  I recover quickly and can get back on my way, but I definitely had to walk up a couple of the hills because running would have been exerting more effort for about the same speed.

At about a mile and a half in, I was way overheated in my fleece jacket.  I ended up doing the rest of the run in my T-shirt.  It's difficult to explain, but it was both cold and not cold at the same time.  I get very warm when I run, so my core felt fine, but at the same time, I could clearly feel that I was underdressed.  I'm definitely getting to a store this week to pick up some better running gear for cooler weather.  I think I was somehow convinced that the temperatures would stay moderate through late-November.  I'm not really sure what I was thinking there!

The run is coming up later this month -- I can't believe it's almost here!  Next Saturday is our longest training run, the full five miles.  Please consider making a donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this week to support our team and the many patients they help every day!

Week 4: Four hilly miles

This week was much nicer weather-wise!  It was perfect, really -- 50s, partly cloudy, and dry.  I was thankful, because the weather made it much easier to get out and run this week when everything else was telling me to stay home!

First, I hadn't done any of my training runs this week.  I've been dealing with a minor issue that makes it uncomfortable to run, so I chose to rest instead.  While I know it was best for me, it left me feeling terribly unprepared for a 4-mile run.  I was still in some pain this morning, so I wasn't sure how it would go, but decided I needed to give it an attempt.

Then, poor Liliana had a rough night and was really struggling to get back to sleep when she'd wake up.  I'm not sure if it was teething or maybe feeling a little off from her vaccines, but in trying to help her, I didn't get to sleep until after midnight, I spent over a half hour up with her around 3, and then had to get up by 7.  Getting out of bed was really tough!

I've also found that the more Liliana grows into toddlerhood, the longer it takes to get ready.  Someone loves to be independent!  As a result, I was wiping the peanut butter and jelly off of her face while rushing out the door 10 minutes later than I'd wanted to be leaving.  Oops.

I'm so glad I made it, though.  More of the team was there today, and for the first time, we weren't running just in the cemetery!  I was excited to try out a different course, and as I expected, it made the run feel much faster than when we were doing multiple loops.  The four miles breezed right by time-wise.

I had to specify time-wise there because our route itself was far from easy.  There were several hills, including one so steep that I couldn't even attempt to run the whole thing while pushing the stroller.  I definitely benefit from the hill training, but it is amazing how much more I feel the stroller when pushing up any sort of incline!  It makes me feel terribly out of shape, but I have to remember that I'm running for Liliana, too.  And even with the steep hills, I ended with an average time of a 10:45 min/mile -- that's a pretty good time for me on a stroller run.

The hills reminded me of one of my most emotional moments of marathon training.  When we did our longest run of our training -- 20 miles -- the coaches left us motivational words along our route in sidewalk chalk.  We always had to run up a steep hill toward the end of our run, and after running so far, the hill was feeling extra tough.  Just as I was ready to give up, I saw the words --

This hill sucks
but cancer sucks worse!

It was that moment where tears came to my eyes and I quickly learned that crying and running do not mix.

There were no tears today, just reflection.  I remembered how hard Caitlin was fighting leukemia while I was running up that hill.  And today, three years later, I run while my mom fights cancer too.

My mom began her journey to becoming cancer-free this week with her mastectomy on Wednesday.  The surgery went well, although they found cancer in one of her lymph nodes and had to remove some additional lymph nodes as a precaution.  They kept her at the hospital overnight but released her Thursday morning.  So far, recovery is going well.  Her strength in facing this amazes me every day.

There are only 5 more weeks until race day.  If you were thinking of making a donation, now would be a great time!  I'd love to reach my personal goal of $1000, but need your help to get there!  Your tax-deductible donation helps fund treatments that save lives, and research to help save even more.

Week 3: Braving the cold for 3.5 miles

I'm not used to this fall running business. Having trained for my marathon over a summer, my running gear consists of tank tops and running shorts.  So when I woke up on Sunday morning for our group run and realized it was 34 degrees outside, I wanted nothing more than to curl up under some warm blankets and go back to bed.

If only cancer would just go hide on cold days!

Thankfully, I have some yoga pants -- what mom doesn't? -- and crossed my fingers that I'd be comfortable wearing my Nike Women's Marathon hooded sweatshirt.  I found my fingerless gloves with the mitten flaps, and my earmuffs.  If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that I need my ears covered on a cold run!  But honestly, I didn't really know what I needed layer-wise for running in the cold, so I just hoped that going outside in something that wasn't quite warm enough for just walking might do it.

Liliana, on the other hand, was good to go.  Thanks to her growth slowing down, she still fits in most of her gear from last year.  She got to stay in her footie pajamas, and we threw on her Columbia fleece bunting and a fleece hat.  I grabbed a blanket for good measure.  I'm not sure she was capable of feeling how cold it was outside!

The other moms were surprised that Liliana didn't fall asleep with how cozy she looked.  She spent some time glazed over, and given that she'd started the day at 5 AM, it wouldn't have been that surprising, but I know my girl all too well.  Two minutes later she was asking for a snack!

The run was tough for me this week, both because of the cold and because we're still running in the cemetery.  It's not a terrible place to run, and it made sense this week because our coach was recovering from a marathon and couldn't run with us, but the loops just get to me.  We had to do three loops this week, and by the third I just wanted to be done.  I think we'll be going out into the neighborhood next weekend; I'm definitely looking forward to a change!

And as for my layers, most of them ended up coming off.  By mid-way through, I was running in short sleeves!  I was a little shocked that I found that comfortable, but the sweatshirt was way too warm.  Of course, once I stopped, the chill quickly returned, and lingered with me for several hours.

This week my mom is in my thoughts more than anything.  Tomorrow (Wednesday), she has her mastectomy, the first step in her journey to be cancer-free.  I'm really wishing I could be there with her, but I can't, so I'll run instead.  Liliana and I will be out in pink tomorrow to honor her.

Week 2: A wet 3 miles

It was a super quiet Saturday morning this week.  Liliana didn't wake up until after 7:30, so there wasn't really enough time to get her ready to go.  Plus, with the threat of rain on a cool morning, I wasn't sure how fun it would be for her to chill out in the stroller getting wet!  Only half of our team was there this week; a couple of moms had prior commitments and we're guessing the others saw the rain and said no thanks.

I'm not a stranger to rainy runs.  When I was marathon training, we had a run just before we were supposed to get by a hurricane.  The rain was falling in sheets and my running shoes had puddles!  In comparison, yesterday really wasn't bad at all.  It was just a light mist of a rain for the most part, which got slightly heavier toward the end of the run, but backed off before we left.

Without Liliana with me, I forgot just how difficult it is to carry things without a stroller!  It was quiet enough without having to entertain her, but I also didn't have a way to carry my phone, so I went without music as well.  I typically like something to help distract me on runs to make them go by faster, and I also like having my phone to track my pace, but I made do without.

We've been running in a cemetery the past couple of weeks.  It's a nice, paved loop that's just over a mile.  Something about the cemetery, the rain and the quiet just made me very reflective.  I don't doubt that many of the people buried there lost their lives to cancer.  In a way, I felt like I was running for them.  I'm still feeling a little rusty, so those three miles were tougher than they used to be, but thinking about the people whose lives have been lost, and those we are trying to save, helped carry me through.

I've been super sensitive to the topic of cancer lately.  As we all know, October is breast cancer awareness month, and this year it hits close to home.  For those who don't know, my mom is battling stage 2 breast cancer and will be having a mastectomy next week, followed by chemotherapy.  The pink is everywhere this month, and every time I see it, it reminds me of her.  Her prognosis is very good, but she has a long journey to remission.

So while I'm technically running for leukemia and lymphoma research, I'm also running in honor of my mom this time.  If I can be half as strong as my mom, I'll be capable of conquering any hill, even while pushing a stroller with a flat tire.  She is so brave and so determined. I feel helpless sometimes, being so far away from her, but at least I can run.

Week 1: Birthday weekend 2-miler with the team

My birthday was yesterday.  At this point in my life, it's mostly just another day, but one of my friends suggested doing something special for my birthday weekend.

I did my first group run with my team of moms today, and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate my birthday, honestly.  We're running to celebrate life -- our own health, the lives of our kids, the lives of the people who have survived their battles with blood cancer, and in honor of those who have passed on.  We run to raise money to fund patient resources and research toward a cure, so that people can celebrate more birthdays.

So for the sake of birthdays, I made it through another 2-mile run, with Liliana in tow.

I honestly didn't think Liliana was going to be able to come with me this morning, as she didn't fall asleep until after 9:30 last night.  Her bedtime is around 8!  But at 6:45 this morning, after days of not waking up until around 7:30-8, she decided she was good to go.  I'd like to think she knew that this morning was special.

Our team is amazing.  There are women of all abilities, kids of all ages.  Two moms are less than 3 months postpartum!  Granted, my complications and anemia kept me down, but even if I'd had an easier recovery, I still don't think I would have been ready to take on training for five miles so soon.  I wanted to give them high fives.

Liliana was a very patient passenger today, as we took some extra time for introductions and a mid-run break for some strength exercises.  We also waited to support our fellow teammates behind us.  Waiting is not exactly easy for a toddler, but with a snack and some leftover Mardi Gras beads from the Big E parade, she was good to go.  She was pretty quiet today, but I have a feeling she'll start to open up as we get more into our routine.

As for me, I'm huffing and puffing a bit as I get my body readjusted to running.  I was running 6 miles back in July when I thought I'd try training for the Hartford Half Marathon, but when Liliana started having a rough patch of sleep, I had to quit because my body just wasn't recovering like it needed to.  Without a goal, I got lazy and pretty much haven't put my running shoes on in the past two months!  I know it'll come back quickly enough so long as I keep at it and get my mid-week sessions in.  I definitely feel better today than I did after my first attempt at running on Tuesday, so there's progress for sure!

If you've been thinking of making a donation toward cancer research, you could be my first official donor!  It would definitely get you brownie points, and who knows, maybe some actual brownies?  Even without the potential for a sweet treat I hope you'll consider making a donation.  Consider it like me doing the running for you!

Lacing up my running shoes -- and unpacking the stroller

Hello again!

Three years ago, I did something I never thought I could -- I went from non-runner to marathon runner in just a few short months.  I ran the Nike Women's Marathon with Team In Training in honor of my dear friend Caitlin, who was battling leukemia.

Caitlin passed a couple of months after I crossed the finish, but she forever lives on in the hearts of the many people she touched, including mine.  While I had to take a couple of years off of running to have my beautiful daughter Liliana -- whose curiosity and love of the world remind me of Caitlin every day -- I've been determined to get back on the road.  Earlier this year I trained for a 5k with Liliana, and we crossed the finish line together during Mother's Day weekend.  But we're ready to take it to the next level, and that's why we're training together, through Moms In Training, to complete a 5-mile race this November in Caitlin's memory.

I'm so excited to be running again for such a wonderful cause.  And even though I'll be chasing after thrown shoes and sippy cups while singing Old McDonald to keep my training partner entertained, it is worth every moment!

My personal goal is to raise $1000 for leukemia research.  If you're interested in making a donation of any amount -- even $5 makes a difference! -- you can donate using the button on the top right of this page.  I can also process cash, check or credit card donations personally.

I hope you'll follow us on our journey to the finish line!