I'm Just Not Fast Enough...And Facts are Facts

Editor's Note: Chris is tracking his progress on Patch as he trains for a half-marathon for the LLS with his team Committed to a Cure. 

Chris' Cool Running Stat of the Week: On Tuesday, I ran sub 8 minutes for three consecutive miles. Not to shabby...also, I blew my cousin Judy's challenge of 2 miles in 16:50 out of the water; I am fairly certain she is going to try and catch me now...so the endless cycle begins.

Blood Cancer Factoid of the Week # 1: Approximately every 4 minutes one person in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer.

In short: in the time it took me to run 3 miles on Tuesday morning, nearly 6 people received that devastating news...and that was just Tuesday 5:20 - 5:43AM.

Blood Cancer Factoid of the Week # 2: Approximately every 10 minutes one person in the United States dies from a blood cancer.

In other words, during the same run, 2 people lost their fight. At this pace, I'm not running fast enough, nor am I working hard enough. I've got to admit, I looked those statistics up to be sure I had the particulars of them correct; to be honest, I've seen them before and it makes my heart heavy...I probably didn't recall the particulars for that reason. To lighten the mood of this post, I will include pictures from our event at the Iron Horse Tavern, "Let's Deck Cancer", but that event was 3 hours long...you do the math.

And perhaps the most staggering/mind-numbing-- Blood Cancer Factoid of the Week # 3: Leukemia & lymphoma are the first and third, respectively, most common cancers in children under the age of 20.

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With the exception of my running results, all of the facts above come from the LLS website. I could literally sit here all night gleaning facts from the site, but I missed my run this morning due to oversleeping (sorry Barb, I promise I'll get it in on Sunday!)...I'm not missing tomorrow! My last Blood Cancer Factoid of the Week # 4: LLS invested $72 MILLION dollars in blood cancer research in 2010...$72M! That figure includes 103 new research grants awarded to academic institutions. LLS also supported 347 research projects in 11 countries, including the United States and Canada. And just think about the research and work put into making those facts readily available in a very well done web format!

None of that last fact is possible without the financial support given to people like myself and my Committed to Cure teammates. The survival rate for Hodgkin’s lymphoma is more than double what it was in the 1960's; this is due, in part, to advancements in treatments and research funded and supported by LLS.

This very well may be the least "fun" blog post I write; but facts are facts, and I'm Committed to a Cure.

Coming up, July 16 from noon - 2PM, Committed to a Cure will be hosting a , lead by yours truly. The clinic will be held at the Norcross Cultural Arts and Community Activities Center. The clinic is for ladies 16 and up and something I highly recommend if you've never taken a course before (well, it's recommended for everyone, regardless). I can assure you that you won't learn is how to wrestle a much bigger man to the ground and make them cry like my 1 year old, but I can assure you will learn practical techniques that don't require years of training to master. Shawn asked to be one of our bad guys; be gentle with him, ladies, he's a delicate flower.

Kicking cancer's butt, one stride at a time,

-Chris Mattison

http://pages.teamintraining.org/ga/rnrsav11/cmattison