The NYC Marathon is notoriously hard to get into. They have a lottery and the odds aren't great, in fact, I don't know a single person that has actually gotten in via the lottery that lives in the NYC area. The only people I know that have gotten in were from out of town (they have two separate lotteries, one for those of us who live in the area and one for those that don't - the one for those that don't has better odds.)
There are of course other ways to get in besides the lottery, if you lottery three years in a row and don't get in you can get in on the 4th year automatically, or you can run 9 races with the NYRR throughout the year and volunteer for one race and you can get in the next year, or you can be really fast and get a qualifying time (never going to happen), OR you can run for charity which is obviously the option I chose.
I've wanted to run a marathon for a long time, and I've really wanted to run the NYC marathon and do it for cancer in both memory of and in support of people I love in my life who have or are fighting a battle with cancer. Since I'm turning 30 next year (GULP) I figure doing it before I turned 30 was a good goal to set for myself. So I signed up to run with Fred's Team and opted to put my donations towards strategic need research as the people in my life have been affected by many different types of cancer so I didn't feel like I could choose just one type.
Both of my grandparents on my mom's side died within 3 months of each other back in 2007, my grandfather from liver cancer and my grandmother from a decade plus battle with a rare form of intestinal cancer. Since then my stepmother has been battling breast cancer and my great uncle has battled prostate cancer. Of course, these are just a few of the people in my life who have been affected by the disease. And they are the people I think of when I am a quarter mile into a hot and miserable 3 mile run and don't what to run another step. They are also the people I think of when I don't want to get out of bed and train. Training for the marathon is more than just about a goal for me, it's also about honoring people in my life who have been affected by cancer.
I will admit that fundraising is incredibly intimidating for me. Asking people for money is scary and not something I find comfortable at all. But being out of my comfort zone is a good thing! And quite frankly, the more people I have supporting me the more people I feel like I would let down if I don't end up crossing the finish line on November 6th which is much needed extra motivation.
I'm still working on coming up with idea of how to fundraise. I've thought about getting back into painting and selling the paintings to raise money towards my goal. I've also thought about trying to partner with a local restaurant and hosting a dinner with a percentage of proceeds to go towards my fundraising goal. I'm not sure how feasible either of these ideas is, but at least they are thoughts in the right direction. And if all else fails, Fred's Team has my credit card number and they will graciously charge me the balance of the goal if I don't make it. Ha. Just another type of motivation for this girl!
In training news, I had another tough run today. I don't know what it is about running down at the shore but it's much harder for me than running around good old Hoboken. Today I just had three miles on the schedule and it took me an embarrassingly long time to finish them so I'm not even going to post my stats because I'd just like to forget them. All I can hope is that come half marathon time down here in August I'll be in better shape than I am today or I might be crawling across the finish line.
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