Today was the first day of the real Team in Training experience. We all met at a local Junior College and had our first 'run'. Many ran, many walked. I walked. A journey of 26 some miles begins with - a walk.
Afterwards we, probably 50-100 people, gathered and introduced ourselves. At first everyone clapped after someone gave their three sentence statement on why they were running but a coach discouraged that. "You really don't want to clap after someone says they're running because their mom died of Leukemia."
And there was a lot of that.
It's not really a random sampling, but everyone had a cancer story. It was a very depressing 45 minutes. There was a Lymphoma survivor who was going to run his first marathon. There was the woman who had been running for many years but probably wouldn't this year because she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer a few months ago. And people were running for the aunts and uncles and friends and co-workers who had been diagnosed with some form of cancer.
After the meet and greet we all received our official TNT tee-shirt (I can quit now?) and training manual and a schedule. I'm off to the races.
If you're just joining us, details can be found here.