“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to
start.” --John Bingham
Last Saturday, the night before the big race, over
2,500 of my closest friends, also known as my national network of Team in Training
teammates, ascended on the San Diego Convention Central for our traditional
Team in Training Inspirational Dinner. Rumors
had been flying around the expo about a very special guest speaker—John Bingham. I could not wait to get to the dinner to find
out if it was true.
I met my team in the lobby of our hotel at 5PM and
we walked over to the dinner together.
As we walked into the lobby of the convention center, there were
hundreds of TNT staff and family members--some dressed in crazy wigs and costumes--clapping, yelling and cheering for the
team members. Honestly, it was very
overwhelming at first. I did not know
what to expect. All of the sudden all of
these people were cheer and yelling for me.
After a few seconds I got into it and started cheering for my teammates
too.
We got our pasta dinner from the buffet and found
our tables. At each seat was a very special
placemat that read “at this table sits a HERO”.
I had never really looked at myself or my teammates that way, but I
guess to the cancer patients we help, we are.
Each staff member decorated their team’s table. Stephanie decorated ours in the Hershey
theme. It was fun to walk around and see
how the other tables with teams from across the country were decorated.
After we ate we got to listen to a few speakers. The first was Jennifer Grandy, the Team in
Training National Director. She had some
amazing news to share. She told us that
the national Team in Training San Diego Team raised over $7.3 million! She also told us how the money would be
used. There is a new, very promising
drug that just made it through a phase one clinical trial. In the trial 28/50 patients went into
remission, while only 15/50 went into remission with the old drug. These results are simply astonishing! Wouldn’t it be amazing if I was part of
finding the cure for cancer!
After all the seriousness came the fun! Our guest speaker was the famous penguin
runner, John Bingham. John has written several
books on running, and was a writer for Runner’s World Magazine. John told us lots of funny stories—about the
running “bite me zone”, and about sitting in porta potties and why you may
never be able to stand up again. He was
very entertaining and inspirational at the same time.
The Team Inspirational dinner was so perfect to get
us in the running mode. We were reminded
of the real reason so many of us trained.
I left the dinner ready to run for such a wonderful cause! If you would
like to donate, I am still taking donations for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
There is a link on the upper right.
A dream is a wish…
--Amy
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