Kickoff

Yesterday morning we had our kickoff for the Boston marathon team in the Wellesley community center. Out of 142 runners, 10 or so mentors, 2 coaches, and tons of volunteers, I was surprised at how many people I knew. I was happy to see Sarad again, who coached the first team I mentored but who I haven't seen since early spring; he's going to be coaching our team along with Kelly, who I'd heard a lot about but hadn't met. Two of my teammates will be mentoring this season, so there will be lots of familiar faces around. That said, there's also tons of new people to meet, so I'm really excited.
We got our training schedule (which I promptly left in Amy's car)--since 85% of the team are first-time marathoners, we start really easy, at a 3-4 mile long run! Training is like math class, though--it seems so easy for quite a while, then all of a sudden you think, "When did this get so f*$&%ing hard?"
We also met our honored heroes. One of them, Lindsay Kimball, is 14 years old and a two time leukemia survivor who has been dealing with this disease for her entire life. This is her seventh season of involvement with Team in Training. Can you imagine what that would be like? She was first diagnosed at age 5, had two years of chemo followed by two years of remission, then a relapse, a bone marrow transplant, and nearly a year of complete isolation while her immune system was toast. She's barely a teenager now. I meet people like her and her family fairly often these days, people who understand that sometimes your goal for the day is just to not throw up at school (I can vividly remember the isolated third-floor handicapped bathroom at Dawson I would use when I just couldn't make it, and even worse, I remember thinking that I probably wasn't the only one who took advantage of the isolation of that bathroom!)
Anyway. My back hasn't been feeling great lately, but I have a chiropractor appointment this week, and I really am going to start on my core program again. Really.
Looking forward to our first practice on Saturday!