The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

If you are looking to train for a marathon or half marathon event, Team in Training is the place for you! This group will motivate you to get off the couch or wherever you are in your training program… to get you ready for a big race event.
Whether you have desire to be a runner, walker, bicyclist or triathlete, this is a program for you. Coaching is provided at all skill levels.
While fundraising is a part of this program, it is fun. The mentors help make this part of the program easy and rewarding!
I have so many friends whose lives have been saved by LLS… and I am so very appreciative of the medical advancements made in the treatments of blood cancers due to funding by LLS.
We are saving lives, accomplishing miles and making tremendous memories at the same time!

First of all, please don’t get me wrong… Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a FANTASTIC charity. If you know someone who is training for a marathon with Team in Training, I highly suggest you donate to them. Your hard earned money is going to a wonderful cause.
That being said, I trained for my first marathon with the OC Coast chapter of Team in Training and I did not have a good experience at all.
I was under the impression that, as a brand new runner, TNT would be a great place for me. They would give me lots of training tips and support me not only in my fundraising, but also in my harrowing journey from couch potato to marathoner.
Sadly, this was not the case.
As a beginning runner, I hardly got any support. Not from my run coaches. Not from my mentors. I was the slowest runner in my training group and I often felt like a burden at trainings because people had to wait around for me. Several times when I was nearing the end of a long and difficult training run, my run coach would pull up next to me in his car asking me if I was okay. He got in his car to come look for me. As if I was dead on the side of the road. When I was just running at my own pace. Running a double digit distance when you are not at all an athlete is hard on a person mentally as well as physically. Imagine what this did to any sense of accomplishment I was feeling at the end of these runs. :-\
The best was when I would finally make it back to our meeting spot and find everyone gone. Okay, not everyone. There was usually one person who legally had to stay until I made it back, but that one person was slowly inching towards her car as soon as she saw me round the corner. Then I was all alone to dig around for my keys that were thrown in the grass. Good times.
We were supposed to have mentors encouraging us through the process. My friend’s mentor quit halfway through the training season. Mine sent generic e-​mails once a week (they felt like they were copy and pasted from a form somewhere) and came to trainings about once a month. Oh so encouraging.
Thank GOD I had some friends training with me. They are the only thing that made this experience good for me. I have heard so many other people say so many good things about TNT — they got so much support, their mentors became some of their best friends, they loved the experience. I am just so baffled and disappointed that my experience was so different.
I felt more like a burden than a member of a team.
OH! Then there was our 20 mile run. The BIG ONE before the marathon. Our run coach has us running through Peter’s Canyon. Up GNARLY, UNPAVED HILLS full of LOOSE ROCKS. THROUGH and UNDER overgrown trees and brush.
We were running the LA Marathon. On paved, flat roads. Why on Earth would he introduce beginning runners to this kind of terrain for the first time during our 20 mile run?! When we are just trying to maintain endurance?!? One of my friends FELL and could have severely injured her ankle or leg, and another friend re-​injured a foot that had been healing nicely until it encountered this terrain… and it ended up REALLY bothering her during the actual marathon. What was he thinking? How was this helpful for beginning runners? We called him out on it and he said «The terrain like that helps you build ankle strength.» WTF? I don’t care about mother effing ankle strength when I am trying to run 20 miles for the first time.
I don’t think the more experienced runners in my group had the same problems with the group that I did. They never got left behind, though. They didn’t feel like they had to join the walking group just so they would be able to have people still around when they finished.
I even had a bad taste in my mouth during our race weekend. I never saw anyone from our team on the course. Other TNT peeps were super friendly, though. I think my chapter was just a dud. Bummer.
Yes, I did end up finishing a marathon. 5 stars for that.
Yes, I did raise almost $ 3,000 for a very worthy cause. 5 stars for that.
However, negative stars for the lack of support this beginning runner received from the OC Coast chapter of TNT. I’ll split the difference and settle on 3. That’s being generous.
I’m so sad I didn’t have the experience with TNT that others had. I wouldn’t recommend NOT training with them, however, if you are a beginning runner I would suggest another chapter besides OC Coast.

A lot of people ask me how I got into running marathons. After all, I was the girl who joined the marching band in high school to avoid taking P.E., and I hated riding my Big Wheel when I was little. I guess you could say that I wasn’t the most athletic person around. But now I’ve run 23 full marathons (26.2 miles)…how on earth did that happen?
One day a co-​worker told me about this program from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society called Team in Training, or TNT for short (obviously TIT was a bad acronym). The program involved raising money for patient support and cancer research, and in return, participants would be trained to run a marathon and have travel expenses such as airfare, hotel, and a few meals paid for. When I saw one of the location options was Cozumel, Mexico, I said sign me up! I’d later realize that a tropical location is not the ideal place for running 26.2 miles, but that’s another story.
Throughout my training I was given tips on fundraising and learned a lot about what the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society does for cancer patients and their families. I also got to meet the little girl I was running in honor of and spent time with her parents. It was a wonderful and very fulfilling experience.
In fact, I enjoyed the program so much, I continued with it after that first marathon and completed a total of 10 marathons with TNT. Sure, it was tough raising that much money, but my friends and family were very supportive, and I volunteered as a mentor with TNT and got a discount on the fundraising. Over all, I raised over $ 15,000 in about four years.
I really gained a lot from Team in Training. Besides the obvious, getting to travel to places like Alaska, Ireland, and Maui, I also made friends that I still have today. I also gained the love of running, and I’m not the girl who hated to sweat anymore. I’m healthier physically, and mentally, I’m happier and more confident. When you cross the finish line of your first marathon, it really changes your life forever. And I don’t know if I would have ever considered running a marathon if it hadn’t been for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.