11

I've made no secret about the fact that I'm not exactly a speedy runner. Odds are good that I'm not going to win a race anytime soon, and I probably won't ever run fast enough to qualify for Boston... I'm okay with that. But, upon accepting my fate as a "back of the pack" runner, I made the conscious decision that if I'm not going to be great at running, then I sure better find something else that I am going to be great at. Luckily for me, DFMC isn't just about running, and thus began my quest for fundraising greatness...

To be honest, I wasn't even striving for greatness in the beginning. It was more like striving just to raise $3,000 so my credit card wouldn't get charged. My fundraising goal was set at $9000 to start with. I was determined to reach my goal, but signing onto my fundraising page back in January and seeing my fundraising total reported at a whopping $500 was a bit unnerving. It seemed like $9000 would never happen. But then I started spending my Saturday and Sunday mornings in the coffee shop with my lap top- sending emails, looking for people's addresses, writing thank you notes- and, sure enough, the donations started coming in. With the help of my family and friends passing along my fundraising email to everyone they knew, I was able to raise over $15,000 before marathon weekend even began. That's when it started to hit me that maybe, just maybe, I could raise enough money to be in the top ten DFMC fundraisers.

Fast forward to yesterday- my official total fundraising amount as of yesterday was $24,551. Awesome! I did a little research on my fellow teammates fundraising and found ten people with fundraising totals higher than mine. Not awesome. Being in 11th place is not even close to as cool as being in the Top Ten. I researched a little more and found that the 10th highest fundraising amount was $24,635. Awesome! I knew I had some checks to be deposited that would put me at just over $25,000. But, upon further investigation I found that the person with the 10th highest fundraising amount is a DFMC vet and has a goal of $30,000. Not awesome. Odds are pretty good he'll reach and probably surpass his goal. Crap.

Ok, I get it. I know it's not a competition. We are all on the same team and we are all raising money for a great cause. In fact, I should be thrilled that so many of my teammates have raised over $25,000. I should be thrilled that I, myself, have raised over $25,000 (especially considering it wasn't looking too good there back in January). And I am. And I'm not just saying that. Working in development at Dana-Farber has given me the chance to see just how much money cancer research costs (trust me, it is NOT cheap), and the fact that 100% of the money we raise through DFMC goes straight to that research means that our fundraising plays a super important role in the search for a cure for cancer. So, though it would be nice to be in the top 10, it's pretty great that I have 10 teammates who have raised such an impressive amount of money. When you look at it like that, 11th isn't such a bad place to be.