Put Me In, Coach

Guest blogger today. There were a lot of runners in yesterday's NYC Marathon wearing blue ribbons to honor the people who endured the bombing of this year's Boston Marathon. JRH was inspired to write about her feelings on the subject and asked if she could share them and the link to donate to her next marathon here. Well, hell yeah! Here she is:

I was part of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s Boston Marathon Challenge team in 2012.  I’d love to say I “Ran Boston” that year, but I played it safe in the near 90 degree heat and walked all but maybe 6 miles of it.  It was still an amazing experience.

I ran for Alyssa, a childhood friend -- wife, mom of two, and runner herself -- who was battling cancer.  We shared a birthday, April 14^th.  In 2012, it fell two days before the marathon.  She passed away two days after the marathon that same year.

I was accepted to the DFMC team last year, but declined to register, a little overwhelmed by the financial, emotional, and physical commitment of it all.  If I had run, I would have been somewhere at mile 19 or 20 when the bombs when off.  I am not sure if my husband would have made it to the finish yet, after cheering me on somewhere along the course.  Or if my parents would have decided to take my 7 year old to Boston to see me finish.

I know the entire running community and most of New England took the events of last April personally, but those were *my* runners out there on the course and at the finish when the bombs when off.  The charity runners.  The probably couldn’t dream of qualifying for Boston but run in reverence of what it stands for runners.  The this might be the only time we do this runners.  *I* took it personally.  I wasn’t directly affected that day, so my energy hasn’t been spent recovering or grieving.  I’ve spent my energy plotting revenge.  I want to be out there on April 21, 2014 – again for Alyssa, for the patients of Dana Farber, for those who were affected last April, and for myself.  I am not sure what the bombing suspects were hoping to accomplish that day, but they didn’t succeed in stopping us, and I want to be there to prove it.

Put me in coach, I’m ready to play.

Thank you for any support to honor a loved one, kick cancer’s ass, or enact revenge at www.runDFMC.org/2014/julieh