KATE - I'm sorry I have to run

As all the peripheral information on this blog indicates, I'll be running a marathon this fall. At this point I feel like I should spell out big letters, it's likely to be a HALF MARATHON as, unless I am bitten by a radioactive spider in a timely fashion, 26.2 miles is probably beyond my reach. A HALF MARATHON also might lend some credibility to my claims that I'll be doing it at all. Because, when you think about it, 13 miles? Probably anyone could limp through that. I know some people that can run 13 miles before they brush their teeth and to them I say that I'm both suitably impressed and sick with jealously. I admire anyone who can lace up their Nike's and casually announce they're going for a ten mile run without then breaking into hysterical laughter or a cold sweat. I do both.

And yet, I want to run. I don't know why and can't explain the impulse. Maybe it's because runners look so composed while they're flitting down jogging paths and around the local lakes. Their form says I'm casual enough to not need a gym, but tough enough to take it to the streets. They look so cool, I can't help but want that. Yet I'm painfully aware that when I run I resemble the Princess Fiona character from Shrek, struggling to remove a tree stump from her backyard with her bare hands. I am not cool, calm and self-possessed. I'm sweaty, gasping for breath and a color not occurring in nature. But since I blessedly can't see myself, I continue to pop on my iPod and pretend I look like Bo Derek running down the beach. Denial can be a powerful motivator.

And while looking cool while running is something I know I'll never achieve, I'm still going to keep on doing it. Not because I think I'll grow to like it or someday acquire that mythical runner's high (seriously, that has got to be an urban legend,) but because I believe in the cause I'm running for. This year I've known four people who have been diagnosed with Leukemia. It got to the point that I didn't even want to look at my email in the morning because I couldn't take seeing another link to one more Caring Bridge website of a distraught mother, sister, aunt or husband desperately archiving the illness of a loved one fighting for their life. In mid March I was notified by email that yet another talented, wonderful and kind person we knew had passed away from Leukemia and I shut my computer off and decided not to read those emails any more. Instead I took my kids to the park. But the yucky feelings wouldn't leave me and I realized that when you're diagnosed with a blood cancer, you don't get to walk away. You have to stay and fight it even when every part of you wishes you could pretend it isn't happening.

That's why I'm doing it. And that's why I say I'm sorry I have to run. It would would be nice if we lived in a world where the beautiful runners among us could simply flit about in their infinite coolness, the born couch potatoes like myself could hunker down with HGTV and a bag of Oreos and no one was ever told that they or someone they love will face a devastating diagnosis or a life cut short. But life's not fair, as I so often remind my kids. The most we can do is get off the couch and try to do something about it, big or little, half or full.

So if you see someone running around the city this summer sweating profusely, panting like a Labrador and faintly resembling an ogre, flag me down. I'll take any excuse to stop.