Setting Goals

--And Helping Miriam Meet Hers

I’ve been thinking about the value of setting goals.

I was an awkward child who, whenever she could, stayed inside. I avoided team sports and team captains avoided me. When forced by PE teachers to run around the football field in high school I had a terrible cramp in my side and was last coming in. I hated exercise.

But about five years ago, inspired by a friend, I signed up to train for a marathon with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training. I agreed to raise $2,000 and they trained me for my first marathon. The tee shirts read,

“Think training for a marathon is tough? Try chemotherapy.”

I didn’t run. I walked. I finished my first marathon in 6-1/2 hours and felt great. Shortly afterwards the 14 year old leukemia patient in whose honor I had participated, lost his battle to leukemia. I signed up for a second marathon and raised another $2,000 in his memory. I didn’t think I could finish a marathon, didn’t think I could raise money, but I did both.

Setting a goal and meeting it gives such a sense of satisfaction. They don’t have to be big, life changing goals. Little goals set and met move me forward. I have two goals for the next months:

(1) I want to finish Level 1 of The Knitting Guild Of America’s Masters Class and send it in for review. I'm aiming for the end of the month. OK, the end of August.

(2) I want to run (well, walk/run) the Four Bridges Half Marathon at the end of October. The race has a 2 hour and 45 minute cut off time so I have to pick up my speed. I think I can do it if I start training now and really work at it.

And I want to help my youngest daughter, Miriam, meet a goal she has set for herself. With her mother’s encouragement, she joined Team In Training. Now she is the one raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Miriam is only 26. She is an 8th grade English teacher. Her friends are teachers, graduate students and others just setting out in a difficult economy. She’s selling bottled water, hosting a Silpada jewelry party, and appealing for donations. The funds are slow coming in and she’d sure appreciate your help. So would I. Clink here to go to her fund raising page and join us in the fight against leukemia and blood cancer.