by Cathy Troisi
Despite my daughter's urging - I had no intention to ever run.
For three years I had been quite content to log my annual 2,200 miles in a walk mode. In 1994 I was walking my fifth marathon in Los Angeles when I had an opportunity to observe runners being companions to blind runners. The blind runners were members of the Achilles Track Club, which is an organization for athletes with disabilities.
Right then and there I decided that I wanted to be a companion to a blind runner. Yet, I was walking; they were running. Really running. The decided difference in our forward motion needed to be addressed so four months later, I sent myself off to running camp. And that was the beginning of the end. The end of walking marathons. Now, six years later, I have done an additional 52 marathons in run / walk mode, a la Jeff Galloway.
I must confess I went to running camp with some trepidation. Would I be the oldest? Would I be the slowest? Although close on both counts, I was neither. And I learned something I didn't expect to learn at running camp. I learned that I wouldn't be able to keep up with the blind runners. I learned that I don't have speed. No matter - my reasons for running are different than most.
In 1988, my best friend from college lost his battle against cancer, although valiantly fought to the end. By the time he convinced anyone that the "wart" on the bottom of his foot was indeed, not one, it had metastasized. He was right; they were wrong. But, they were right about the two year diagnosis. Four years later, I was walking mega-miles per year and walked myself right into a fundraising marathon, the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund, for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I had always felt a sense of symbolism between the marathon distance and the melanoma on the bottom of his foot. Knowing what he endured in the last two years of his life I knew that I could easily endure 26.2 miles. September 24, 2000 will be my tenth Jimmy Fund marathon in his memory.
I was an Achilles companion at the NYC marathon in 1999 to a blind runner. He was a nineteen year old Norwegian doing his first marathon. I have been an Achilles companion to a wheelchair athlete from Norway. I
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