Somehow, I managed to drag myself out of bed 5:45 on Sunday morning to go for a seven and a half mile run in the Santa Monica Mountains as part of my Team in Training activities. I’ve been AWOL at the weekly runs for the past three weeks, due to two scheduling conflicts and one incident involving the snooze button—one which I’d rather not discuss in further detail as it is very embarrassing and pretty self-explanatory.

I arrived to the meeting point for our trail run at 7 a.m. and was greeted by the welcome sight of my fellow Team in Training runners and was immediately happy that I had successfully wrangled my way out of my cozy covers. Before we took off running, we received a quick briefing about nutrition during the day of our big race, followed by a chat with one of our Team in Training assistant coaches, Javier.

He talked about his mother living on the other side of the country with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which I learned is incurable at this time. He became emotional discussing her prognosis and if someone would have noticed me tearing up, I would have simply blamed my allergies, which have been plaguing me with watery eyes lately.

After Javier finished explaining how running with Team in Training had helped him to cope with his mother’s illness and that he had seen firsthand what the donations to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society were helping people do, my anxiety about the fundraising aspect of my half-marathon in January diminished.

The least I can do is put aside my sheepishness about asking people to give to the cause and continue to come up with creative ways to provide incentives for people to pledge funds.

Currently, I’m giving out cupcakes to Los Angeles-based pledges from now until October 31st. Click here to donate, or email me at timmonslisa@gmail.com for more information.