and so i tri: June 2013

I am not quite sure where the year has gone. I mean, I was just recovering from what was my last [really] bad idea - that would be the Goofy Challenge, for you joke-sters who were thinking "which bad idea was that, exactly?"

Lo and behold, I laced up my running shoes this past weekend to begin a new adventure - training for what will be my SIXTH full marathon - Marine Corps 2013!!!! I must admit, I am super stoked that I am able to participate in this 26.2 on October 27th.

My family visited Washington, DC, many times over the course of our youth. My favorite trip was the vacation full of mishap - we had a bit of difficulty finding the zoo. We had been in Virginia Beach and Colonial Williamsburg, and my mom insisted that we go to DC to see the pandas. Did I mention we were sunburned? And it was the middle of August? And that my brother, sister and I were all crammed in the backseat of our Taurus? Aaahhhhh, family vacation! Long story short, we tried following the bus route, but missed something. We drove all over the city, stopping to ask for directions. The one thing we really laugh about to this day is how shocked we were at the responses we received from different ethnicities regarding what part of town we were going to need to drive through to arrive at our destination. Eventually, we did get to the zoo, where all of the people and animals were hiding from the sun. I don't even remember if we saw the pandas. I remember that it was really hot, extremely smelly, and there was not an ice cream vendor in sight.

Where was I? Oh, right - running Marine Corps! I am excited to take on another challenge while paying respect to the Marine Corps, to visiting a city that I absolutely love, to celebrating being cancer free for my 15th year, for training and raising funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through Team In Training.

DONATE HERE: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sun/corps13/megansuper

All summer long, you can find be in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, trekking up and down the trails, logging my miles in the dark quiet hours before the sun wakes. You will find me at the State Fairgrounds and Ray-Jay, hawking Jell-o shots for donations. You will find me again at Ray-Jay, hawking concessions to football fans for donations. You will find me on Facebook and Blogspot, posting and re-posting my pleas and fundraising websites. You will find me in your email inbox, updating you of my progress and asking for donations.

You may wonder if I really love Team In Training, or runnning, and the answer is YES! Maybe not at every moment (TEAM excluded), but at the end of it all, YES - I love running. I love that hundreds of thousands of people raised funds for cancer research so that my awesome oncologist and team of nurses were able to beat my NHL. I love that my body is once again strong and able, that I have the energy to not just walk down the street, but to RUN as many miles as I wish. I love that my spirit was reborn and that my heart is constantly growing, that I have the opportunity to give to others what was given to me - a second life.

And so I run . . . . . .

I've been reading my blogs, and I decided that perhaps I should share something a bit closer to ME. If you have been reading my roll, or even do a quick glance or google search, you know that I am athletic, that I participate in races from 10ks to marathons to half iron distance triathlons, and possibly that I work in accounting. And that's all well and good, because I love it - really, I do. Not so much the swimming (or the accounting), but that's an entirely different post! So I decided to post something a little more fun - a picture montage of some of my very favorite days, in no particular order - proof that I don't just TRI! Enjoy :-)