How to Save the World While Losing Weight (A Fundraising Story)

You've got that "helping others" thing in your blood, but there's no one to drive you to the park for clean-up day.
And the Save the Polar Bears trip to Arctic Circle would kind of mess with your rehearsal schedule for the spring musical.
And you've got a totally justifiable fear of the people who run the aluminum foil drive.

No problem. Maybe this'll help you out.

To give you a little context, you need to know two things:
1) My grandmother, Harriet, was my idol. She was this tiny, elegant, high-powered CEO lady who could fire off snark like it was her job and then turn around and dazzle everybody with an insanely delicious eight-course meal. She was funny and wry and brilliant, and I called her "Supergrammy," and it tore my heart from my body when she succumbed to cancer in 1997. Ever since then, I'd been looking for a way to honor her memory, but nothing ever seemed quite right.
2) Fast-forward to February of 2010. Jeff (my then-boyfriend) and were feeling fat. Like, we're-each-at-least-30-pounds-heavier-than-we-were-when-we-first-started-face-mashing fat. We ordered in calorie-fests most nights, and occasionally, we'd change the DVD. Every now and again, one of us would get inspired to fix the sitch, overdo it at the gym, and then be like, "Yep, that'll hold me for the next few weeks/months/whatever." That was "exercise."

Around that time, a mutual friend of ours started running. Like, really running—doing half-marathons and actually FINISHING them and getting in great shape. She was non-athletic and ridiculously busy like us, so we both marveled at how someone with our special combination of flab and overscheduling could bang out 13.1 miles like it was nothing.

Our friend confessed. She'd signed up with Team in Training, and hadn't looked back since.

Team in Training (or TNT, as she explained) is part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a program where you, a dude- or lady-person of almost any health level, sign up for any endurance event TNT offers—a marathon, triathlon, half-marathon, century ride, etc. Then, TNT gives you the professional training with rockstar coaches from beginning to end to make sure you cross the finish line without, say, dying. As part of the training, you commit to raising a certain amount of money. All that cash goes towards cancer research, patient care, assistance for families of patients, and the like. (TNT is just one of many really good programs with similar structures.)

Our friend, who started as a total beginner, was now a half-marathoner. She'd done a few events with them, and was feeling great about giving cancer patients a better shot at survival, and families of patients just a little more hope.

As she told me all this, a weird thunderbolt-style epiphany rocked my brain: this is it. This is the way to do something amazing in Harriet's memory.

Yes, I totally signed up for an info session, and yes, since I was too chicken to go alone, I made Jeff come with me. And honestly? It was pretty cool. We heard from lots of different people—participants, survivors, participants WHO ARE ALSO SURVIVORS (which still blows my tiny mind)—and we were hooked. They gave us the option to sign up for an event then and there, and coincidentally, there was one scheduled for the day before my birthday. In October. Six months away.

And it was a marathon.
26.2 miles.
In Dublin.
And did I mention we'd each need to raise $4,700?

$4,700.

Looking back on it, I'm still so proud that everything came together so well. Jeff took a Flip video of me after making it all the way around our local park for the first time—3.3 miles. It's pretty amazing to think that just a few months later, I would run almost eight times that amount in one fell swoop.

And you know what? I'm the worst person EVER at asking for things, but once I put out the word that I was raising money to kick cancer in the junk, people couldn't contribute their funding fast enough. When they found out about my ties to the disease, the loss of my grandmother, and the chance to do something truly great in her name, the dollars came pouring in. I'm still grateful to every single person who contributed, and I still can't believe that the money we raised could give someone in really bad straits just a little bit more of a chance.

Volunteer work is awesome, but fundraising can be pretty amazing, too—especially if you're doing it for a great cause. And if you're anything like me, you'll get to help some really deserving people in the process, bond with your guy as you take on this huge project together, get healthier, go to a beautiful place, finish your first-ever marathon, have a lovely birthday, and be totally flabbergasted when your then-boyfriend proposes to you on an Irish canal.

But again, maybe that's just me.

Thanks, Supergrammy.