Three weeks until Race Day!

This week represented the peak of my training, with a total of 43.33 miles logged for the week, and just under 150 miles for the month of March so far.

Yesterday, while many of my Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge teammates were braving snowy roads to run 20-22 miles, I was blessed to be running in perfect weather here in Marin County.

I ran from my house in Larkspur over to China Camp State Park (picking up a running buddy on the way, so I had great company for miles 7-14!) and back, as you can see from the map below.

It was probably a little silly to include a giant hill on my route (in both directions!), which slowed me down considerably, but I was happy to have taken it easy enough on that 20 miler to be able to run 5 more miles today. Thumbs up because now it's taper time! "The hay is in the barn," as team coach Jack Fultz likes to say, and the next 3 weeks leading up to the race will see a decrease in the number of weekly miles I run.

Over the next two weeks I'll be making Honor Cards for display at the DFMC Pasta Party the night before the race. This is one of my favorite parts of running for DFMC - learning about the people who inspired donations. Those of you who donated in honor or in memory of a loved one should soon receive an e-mail from me, requesting a photo for the Honor Card. Here's an example for my lovely neighbor Verna, who passed away in 2010 after a nearly 5-year battle with breast cancer.

It has been a privilege hearing your stories, and I will carry these honorees in my heart as I run on April 17.

Every penny of your contribution goes directly to investigators on the leading edge of cancer research, through the Claudia Adams Barr Program for Innovative Basic Cancer Research. For example, the Kinome Project, with initial Claudia Adams Barr Program funding in 1997, discovered mutations in a family of genes called “kinases” that prevent cell growth stimulators from being turned off, resulting in cancer cells that replicate uncontrollably. These discoveries by William Sellers, MD, and his colleagues led directly to the development of targeted drugs used by patients worldwide for the treatment of multiple cancers, including lung cancer, leukemia, and melanoma. Examples include Tarceva and Vemurafenib, which improve survival in subsets of people with lung cancer and melanoma, respectively. This work has become the model for personalized medicine in cancer treatment and is widely credited for helping transform the approach that pharmaceutical companies use for drug development.

If you have not yet donated and would like to do so, please visit http://rundfmc.org/2017/milinda . Every dollar and every mile brings us one step closer to the ultimate finish line: a world without cancer.

38 days and $3800 to go!

Thanks to an e-mail campaign I sent earlier this week and a generous donation from my Mom & bonus dad (thanks, Mom & Barry!), I am more than halfway to my goal of raising $10,000 for Dana-Farber! In a funny coincidence, I have $3800 to go, and there are 38 days until the Marathon.

Training is going well; I logged 36.7 miles last week, and am on track to log 37-38 miles this week. Last weekend I ran in China Camp State Park again, and got caught in a hail storm. It was odd because the skies looked clear in one direction.

But less than 20 minutes after I took that photo, the wind picked up and it started hailing, so I snapped a selfie (but you can't see the hail anyway; it was pretty tiny).

I'm wearing the new DFMC team jacket; it's the same style as the bright yellow-green one I have from 2014 (the sleeves come off to turn it into a vest), and I really like the color.

My team singlet arrived this week, along with the honor cards that will be displayed at the DFMC banquet the night before the race. Here is the honor card my girls and I made for my dear friend Dana in 2014:

If you donated in honor of someone, please e-mail me a photo for me to create an honor card for this year's banquet. Your stories inspire me to keep working harder, both when I'm running and when I'm trying to raise more funds for the research that will lead to treatments which might keep future families from losing their loved ones to cancer.

I will be wearing this singlet with pride on April 17. If you or someone you know would like to make a donation to Dana-Farber, please visit http://www.rundfmc.org/2017/milinda.
All team members pay their own race registration and travel fees, so 100% of funds raised go the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This program is responsible for funding research that has led to new treatments such as Provenge for prostate cancer and ipilimumab for melanoma.

An important area of cancer research asks why the human body’s defense systems do not always attack and destroy tumors as they form. Funded by the Claudia Adams Barr Program in 1998, Glenn Dranoff, MD, discovered complex regulatory pathways in the human immune system that cancers exploit in order to escape destruction. Reversal of these effects can lead to the development of vaccines against cancer, like Provenge for prostate cancer. This research has also enabled the development of immune-activating drugs such as ipilimumab, which showed striking effects in melanoma in a trial led by Dana-Farber scientists and is now approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment.

With federal funding for medical research in jeopardy, it is more important than ever that we contribute to organizations doing this critically important work. Together, we are working toward the ultimate finish line: a world without cancer.