Meaning in the Madness

Thanks to a couple of charity minded training partners, I decided to utilize my "Journey" as a means to raise money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. I have put the wheels in motion and submitted my fundraising proposal to them. The fellow I spoke with seemed quite enthusiastic about my ideas about how to get the word out. One of the girls I work with had a GREAT idea--she thought we could issue a challenge to creative teams in the industry to come up with an idea for an ad to promote what I"m doing. The winning creative (the one that I like and that gets approved by the CBCF) will be photographed by one of the guys I produce for. The ad will then get posted on this website called ihaveanidea.org that ad industry people in Canada go on to discuss / rate various ads, talk about the industry etc. We might even be able to do a little countdown / timer thing that shows how many days are left till the race and how far I've gotten with my fundraising. Now THAT would be AWESOME!! I'm really excited about doing this! I think it will add a little more meaning to the madness that I am subjecting myself to on a daily basis. Doing something like this could be seen as selfish by some since it is VERY time consuming--you're almost always training and when you're not, you're so tired you're lucky if you can stay up past 9:00 pm. You become rather "unsociable" (I won't say anti-social because the good intentions are there, you just can't seem to help nodding off like a 90-year old after 9:00 pm) and your quality time with friends and family slowly disappears. Thus the idea of supporting / giving back to a cause that is important to me. Several members of my family have been affected by breast cancer and unfortunately 2 of them died as a result of it (both of my grandmothers). My mom's mother died when I was 13 years old and my dad's mom died when he was only 3. I never had the opportunity to know her, and I'm sure my father has only vague memories of her. Both women left us well before their time (My dad's mom was only 39 and my mom's mom was 67). Even though she died over 20 years ago, I still really miss the one grandma I knew. I'll carry my memories of her throughout my 140.6 mile adventure on July 23rd.