We had a nice little 20 minute group run at 8am. The team met in the lobby and I realized that we were now branded as the "New York Team." See, there were like 20 other TNT Teams in the hotel from all over the country. Next to the DC team, we were the largest. And the loudest. And that morning, Coach Ramon herded us all together by whistling really loud and yelling "YO! Let's GO." All the other teams looked at us like "Oh. There's New York." :) How stereotypical of us.
That afternoon we had a meeting/singlet decoration party. I was so glad that Gina brought cool stick-on letters from Michael's to put my name on my singlet. I am NOT good at writing in white-out or puffy paint and I wanted my singlet to look somewhat classy, so this helped immensely. Plus, Gina made cute little bags for all of her mentees with cool stuff in it. Aw. She is so great.
Everyone talked about why they were there, including Tasha, our honored teammate. See, our honored teammates are currently battling Leukemia or Lymphoma AND running our marathons with us. Pretty impressive. Plus, Tasha is one of the most positive people I know. Tasha is awesome, and I've found myself remembering her when my running gets tough. I mean, if Tasha can go through everything that she's gone through AND run a marathon I can make it through my miles when they get tough.
The coaches also gave us some last minute pointers and told us that it was important for us to have our names on our singlets so that they could call us by name when they came up to help us through our miles on the course. Apparantly in the past, the runners look at them like "who are YOU?" Since we DO have a very high coach to runner ratio (and some of the coaches are from Brooklyn, so I wouldn't know them by sight necessarily.)
We then made our way back to our rooms to get ready for the pasta dinner. Everyone from our team was instructed to go out and buy I Heart NY t-shirts to wear to this, which I thought was a really cool idea. Bill and I got ready and made our way downstairs. When we got through the hallway we had to walk through this huge barage of coaches all screaming and clapping and making noise.
The New York coaches were going especially crazy, but then again, they are usually pretty crazy.We then sat at team tables to listen to the speakers...the first being John Bingham!!! The Penguin himself!!! I was so excited because I LOVE him. Since when I started marathoning I was not the fastest runner I really associated with his whole philosophy of having fun and finishing the race. It's funny too, because I always read his articles in Runner's World like "Wow. This is a really good article." and then I get to the end where he says "Waddle on, friends." and am like "Oh. Right. That's because John Bingham wrote it." :) So I was starstruck, which made me feel a little stupid. And I hung around afterwards to get a pic. Which made me feel REALLY stupid. But I'm glad I did. :)
He was also really funny, by the way.We also had a really inspiring former marine talk to us. I was getting all pumped up.
Here are some things that are REALLY cool:
• When TNT started in 1988 the survival rate for Leukemia was 5%. Now it is 95%!!!
• Over the years, TNT has raised $950,000,000 to help battle blood cancers.
• The New York City TNT Team for the MCM raised $323,000 this year!
The whole evening was really cool and really inspiring. I was very pumped up and ready for the marathon!
Oh, and here is a cute pic of me and my running friends, Michelle, Donna, Gina and Tasha after the dinner.
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