NYC at 3am. Most people who are awake are likely just coming home from a fun night out. I, on the other hand, am just getting out of bed and ready to eat a full meal (which isn’t easy that early) in preparation to run the iconic NYC Marathon. This run is about two things: raising money to bring awareness to fight Hepatocellular Carcinoma and spending time with a friend who’s fighting the terminal illness and will likely never run again.
I’m about to spend the day with a runner who’s on the last run of his life; both figuratively and literally. Figuratively he’s on the last journey, as life’s end is imminent, and today will literally be the very last time he laces up his shoes to run the distance Pheidippides made famous in 490 BC when he ran 26.2 miles to Athens with the great news that the Greek Army had defeated the Persians at Marathon.
In this marathon, I would be a part of Fred’s Team, the very foundation that the NYC Marathon founder, Fred Lebow, established in 1991 to raise money for cancer research. Fred lost his life to cancer in 1994, but his foundation has since raised more than $52 million for Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. As the months grew closer to the event, I was becoming more and more emotional about this run, as my dear cousin is in the fight of his life battling Hepatocellular Carcinoma, a rare form of liver cancer. In my cousins home state of New York, my goal was not to raise the $150+ billion dollars needed for national expenditures for cancer care research in United States alone – it was only to raise a few thousand dollars, and trust that a few thousand dollars would spark an interest in a runner on the course, a stranger in streets, someone who meets my cousin (or another cancer patient) to be an agent for change and make a difference in the life of families who have loved ones battling this disease. And wearing the famous orange shirt of Fred’s Team through the streets of NYC was my platform to do it.
The run itself would take us through all 5 boroughs; starting on Staten Island, across the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn, then Queens, across the 59th Street Bridge for a U-turn to the Bronx, and finally onto Manhattan Island into Central Park to the finish line. My running partner (GC) and I agreed on our race strategy. Go slow and finish slower! No watches or looking at pace allowed, and we’d agree to never, ever look at our final finishing time. Even finishing last was okay – it just meant we’d have more time together. On a day where runners’ times are typically measured by speed to the finish line, our time in this marathon would be measured in the quality of every minute we’d spend together.
It’d be great to tell the narrative of the event itself, the stories of first time runners, some guy in an Elvis costume, the runner I met in Harlem as he wept in the streets while seeing his Grandfathers apartment building for the first time, the conversation I had with a 96 year old Marine who was running his 11th straight NYC Marathon (the most remarkable part was he didn’t start running until he was 85 years old), drinking a beer on the course with GC at mile 25, or the tears we shared crossing the finish line. But, what I learned from that day was far greater than the stories of the other contestant’s human spirit winning on the streets of NY.
“This race is the fertilizer my brain needs to beat this disease today.” That was the phrase GC said over and over when things got tough. And the key word I found in his phrase was “today”. Tomorrow didn’t matter. It was all about loving the moment we were in.
Why not choose to be grateful for what we “have”, not what we “want”? Why not chose to look in the mirror each morning and own the result of each day – not allowing ourselves to rest at night wasting a day of the life that remains…regardless if it’s months, years, or decades…and regardless if we’re blessed with health or fighting a terminal illness. And finally, why should it take a terminal illness to provide that level of clarity to the importance of the precious things we have right in front of us?
That gift, given to me by my cousin and GC, is undoubtedly irreplaceable.