I love to run and I love to kill cancer!

Yesterday I signed up to participate with Team in Training and set a personal fundraising goal of $2000 by October for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's sounds like a big damn scary number, but it breaks down to finding a mere 100 people who can donate $20 or 200 at $10. Those numbers sound much more reasonable to me.

For a lot of people, the challenge is training to run the race. TNT didn't have any marathons available, so I signed up for the Honored Hero half in October. I have zero interest in this event and am finding conflicting information online about whether I can change my event later, such as if the org ever posts its winter events. Oh well. By October, that distance should be a regular part of my marathon training and nothing to stress about at least.

I'm brainstorming creative ideas for fundraising, such as selling jewelry at Open Stage and offering for every donation of $X amount to write the name of a donor's loved one who had cancer on a ribbon and pin them all to my shirt during the race. I think that would be really neat, but I wonder where to set the price point for that. I already have three names of my own. I hope my company will offer a donation and/or matching funds. That would be a big help. I asked my sis if she would donate some funny sketches to sell. She's very talented.

The fundraising guidelines stress the importance of sharing your personal story of why you are doing this and why it's important to you. I don't have an engaging story for why I chose to do this. I signed up because it would be a challenge and because I would be doing good for people. I just love to run. And kill cancer. I could wear my Lady Sif costume (that I plan to make for the Disneyland Half Marathon) again for this race or make a different hero one. Ooh, I could design a Humorless Harpy heroine costume. Fun fun.

Maybe I'll meet interesting and inspiring people along the way (undoubtedly) and bring back a better story another day.

"I love to run and I love to kill cancer!" is a pretty good story, though. I think it would make a good children's book, too. I know I'd read it.