Some random thoughts...

As I pack and make all my last minute preparations, the same random thoughts keep going through my head. 
I have had such a wonderful experience training with the team; do I have what it takes to do another?

Do you? 

To my followers and friends, if I signed up for another event with the Team, could I count on you to help me make my fundraising committment?

To my family, could you deal with me training for another one of these?  With the early mornings, and the tired (and crabby) afternoons, and the endless piles of stinky sweaty clothes (none of which can go in the dryer)?  How about the missed weekends, and softball games, and the fact that I have a tendency to fall asleep by 9:00 PM every night?

I just don't know.

And then...
I hear from my best friend Randi, about her friend Jen Rutansky. 

Jen was first diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma 13 years ago,  when she was only 25.  She underwent radiation treatments, but a year later she was sick again.  Doctors told her that Chemotherapy was her best hope, but she was resistant because she knew that chemo would most likely make her infertile.  She was then offered the opportunity to ripen, harvest, and freeze her eggs so that sometime in the future, when she was well (and presumably married), she could still have children.  She took a chance, and froze her eggs.  In 2005, she and her husband welcomed their son into the world.  The first child EVER to be born to a cancer patient from her own frozen eggs.

I'd like to think that some of my predecessors with team in Training helped fund the amazing advances that allowed Jen to realize her dream of becoming a mother.

I remember when this happened, because it was a really big deal.  Jen was on the Today Show and in newspapers all over the world with her husband and their two children. 
Wait, two children? 
Jen only had 14 eggs frozen, and their surrogate had already miscarried twice.  Just in case the last set of eggs didn't make it, the Rutanskys were also going through the adoption process.  As luck would have it, they adoped a daughter just a few short months before their son was born.  They felt so incredibly blessed to have two darling, healthy babies only a few months apart.

It wasn't an easy road, and Jen battled her Hodgkin's again and again.  She had many treatments, including a stem cell transplant, that would put her cancer into remission for a short time.

Unfortunately Jen lost her battle this week.  She leaves behind her loving family, her husband, and two children who will know that their mom wanted them so much, she was willing to do anything to make them a part of her family. 

I will race on Sunday, not just for my honored hero, Kim Russo, but also in memory of Jennifer Rutansky.
I will race for Kim's and Jen's children, and the hope that they will someday live in a world without cancer.
I will race knowing that the money I raised helps to fund the research that allowed Jen and others like her to realize their dream of becoming a mother.
I will race because I can.

Thank you for this opportunity.