Update 4/25/09

Sometimes it just isn’t your day...or is it?

Hi Everyone,

Sometimes, it just isn’t your day…

Well, my 5th Boston Marathon in finally in the books, I figured some of you would like to know what happened, so here is my race recap. When I left Hopkinton at approximately 10:45 am, on what was supposed to be a mostly cloudy and 54 degree day, it was sunny and 63 degrees. Despite what the newscasters said, trust me, it was NOT a good day for a run weather wise. I almost knew after the winter we had of training in terrible weather that Marathon Monday would probably be hot and sunny. It is just the way things work out especially with me involved. I tend to always be the guy in the cartoon that has the storm cloud following over his head. For those of you who tracked me on the website you probably noticed that I ran a very good half marathon at about 1:49. I was projected to finish around 3:41. That was the pace I had trained at all winter and was very confident that I could attain a time close to this on race day. In fact, I stayed at around an 8 minute pace feeling extremely comfortable, I was not pushing myself as I knew the Newton Hills were ahead. I crossed the halfway point and felt good, right around mile 14 I started to feel a little nauseas. I thought this was odd because I hadn’t experienced anything like this during the past 6 months. At mile 15 I began to feel really sick. At this point, I didn’t know what was wrong, I just knew something wasn’t right. I saw my coach at mile 15 and he told me to just gather myself and take it easy for a couple of miles to see if I would start to feel better. Miles 16-25 were pretty much walk/run miles. When I got to about mile 18 I started to feel very thirsty with the nausea slowly starting to subside. In fact, I was taking in approximately four cups of water/Gatorade at each stop. I typically take in one cup at each water stop during training. I think it’s safe to say that I had gotten fairly dehydrated in the first half of the race. It’s odd because I stayed well hydrated all weekend and took water every mile, you never know how your body is going to react on race day. Sometimes it just isn’t your day….

Or is it...?

There were many times when I thought of dropping out of the race that day, but there was NO way I could. You see a quarter mile from the finish line I had someone waiting for me to finish the race with. When I started to get sick at mile 15, I pretty much knew that a sub 4 hour race was pretty much out of the question unless I started to feel really good again. I knew the chances of that happening in a marathon are slim. At that point it became about just getting to Lina. Just finish the race, forget about the time, forget about the pain, forget about everything. Just get to Boylston Street and finish the race with her. It was really the only thing that kept me going on that day. When you don’t feel well out on the course, you need something to focus on. Everything that Lina had gone through became my strength. When I made that turn onto Boylston Street, I ran about halfway down and there was Lina on the right waiting for me with a big smile on her face. I said to her “you ready to finish this up or what”? In her typical Lina voice, she said “YEP!” and we were on our way. I waited five years for that day and I know I wouldn’t have felt any better if I turned onto that street with a 3:39 time instead of a 4:11. For the first time in about 2 hours, I wasn’t sick to my stomach, my legs didn’t hurt, and I felt great. Above is the picture of us finishing the race. I finished the race in 4 hours 13 minutes.

I want to once again thank all of you for your support over the past 5 years. You guys are all proof that there still are good people left in this world. Asking people for money is never an easy thing, especially in today’s difficult economy, but I truly believe that we will win this fight against blood cancers. I hope Lina and I have inspired you guys as much you have inspired me. This year we will have raised close 6300 dollars, and over the 5 years close to 23000. Thank you all so much!

John

P.S. The next most asked question I get (after what happened you were doing so well) is what about next year? I had no intention of running next year as I was planning on taking some time off. I’ll be honest with you all; I never thought based on how my training went that I would have run over 4 hours and put in this situation. I know I have a sub four Boston in me, from a physical standpoint everything needs to come together on that one day for you to have a good race, my body acted up that day and there is nothing I can do about it. I haven’t made up my mind yet on whether I will run next year, it’s just too soon to think about it. The nice thing is I don’t need to make up my mind until September :-) Until next time……Keep the Faith and God Bless

I hope………

Update 4/18/09

"...Cause when push comes to shove, You taste what you're made of, You might bend till you break, Cause its all you can take, On your knees you look up, Decide you've had enough You get mad you get strong, Wipe your hands shake it off, Then you Stand...."

So this is it, 3 days out from the 2008 Boston Marathon. My number for this years race is 21875. You can track my progress at www.baa.org. Lots of thoughts going through my head right now, have I trained enough, will the weather be good, can I finish in under 4 hours? This years training has been by far the most difficult in the 5 years I have run. I don't ever remember a Winter so tough to train in. It seemed like every Saturday for our long run we had rain, ice, snow, and wind. I feel like I've been pushed to my physical limits which hopefully will pay off come Marathon day.

I have tried to enjoy this year as much as possible because during last years training and race, Lina had spent most of the time in the hospital after her transplant. She wasn't around after my long runs on Saturday (Mostly to make fun of me about how I was hobbling around). This year, that missing piece of the puzzle was back! I realized how lucky we were that Stefanie was a perfect marrow match and how well Lina is doing. Lina should be waiting for me close to the finish line, it really is all the motivation I need to get through the race. I'll be sending out a larger update out after the race. I want to thank you all so much for your kind words and support. I'll be doing my best for all of you come Monday. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

-John

"Everytime you get up And get back in the race, One more small piece of you Starts to fall into place

Update 3/2/08

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

The above is one of my favorite quotes, from one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. The quote is so important because no matter how dark or horrible a situation is that we find ourselves in, if we can hold onto hope that things will get better then it is the one thing that nobody can ever take away from us. Over the past 4 1/2 years it's something that I find myself doing every single day and I know the rest of the family including Lina does the same.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been battling the flu bug. I ended up being sick for about 8 days. I was home from work, pretty much unable to do much of anything andcontained to my room. By about the fourth day I was pretty much ready to go crazy. During that time I started thinking about all of the time that Lina and these other Children had to spend in the hospital. I was ready to go crazy after 4 days and these children that get transplants stay in their rooms for months. I started to realize once again how truly remarkable these children are. It also reminded me why I get up and do those difficult runs in the middle of the winter. I know that there isn't one child over at Childrens that wouldn't trade places with me in one second. When you look at it that way, running 16 miles really isn't that bad.

Lina continues to do well. She will hopefully be heading to high school next year, it's amazing how quickly they grow up. They came over the house today and we had some fun playing some games. I am hoping that she will be able to go to the marathon this year. As of this writing we are about 7 weeks out, time goes by, it waits for nobody. So far this year we have raised 3160.00 dollars, I thank all of you once again for this years and previous donations. It means the world to me.

Just like in the movie, I'd like to end with my own list of hopes.

I hope Lina will run with me at the end of this years race.
I hope no child ever has to go to the Jimmy Fund ever again.
I hope we can raise over a million dollars as a team.
I hope we find a cure.
I hope....

This years donation website is

http://www.active.com/donate/tntma/tntmaJSganga2

As always, you can mail checks to me made out to The Leukemia and Lymphoma society at

John Sganga
88 Cliffe Ave
Lexington, MA 02420

Update 2/10/08

I hope everyone had a great holiday season. It's amazing how quickly the time continues to go by. As I wrote before, the holidays held special meaning this year because Lina was home and we were able to spend it together as a family. The pictures above are from Christmas and as you can see, Lina and Stefanie had a wonderful Christmas. The one great thing is Lina's life is starting to return to normal. She is doing well in school and can now begin to have small numbers of visitors at the house.

One of her favorite gifts for Christmas was guitar hero for the Wii. Now I don't know how familar you guys are with the game, but basically its a guitar and you play the notes as they scroll down the tv screen. She is able to play the game with her friends (and uncles). She does very well and she kicks the crap out of me at the game. She isn't very shy about letting me how much better she is than me. For those of you who know how well I take losing , you can imagine how well it sits with me. At some point, maybe I'll get enough practice to make it somewhat competitive. My favorite Christmas gift was getting to spend all that time with Lina.

As of this writing, we have raised 3000.00 dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. We are about 10 weeks out from this years marathon. That is about halfway through the training. We are once again trying to be the first million dollar team for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. Last year we fell about 70,000 dollars short of a million. We are hoping this year to break that number. Once again, anything that you can give is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for your support during these past 5 years. I will update again after our 20 mile training run. That will be when we begin the tapering part of our training.

Some of you may know that I was in Phoenix for the Super Bowl...um that is all I have to say about that.

This years donation website is

http://www.active.com/donate/tntma/tntmaJSganga2

As always, you can mail checks to me made out to The Leukemia and Lymphoma society at

John Sganga
88 Cliffe Ave
Lexington, MA 02420

Update 12/18/07

WOW, what a difference a year makes. As you can see from picture above, Lina is doing extremely well and normalcy is starting to return to her life. It was a week ago last year that Lina had gotten a stem cell bone marrow transplant from her sister Stefanie. It is kind of amazing to me how quickly this past year has gone by. It is going to be a very special Christmas for all of us this year. I can't express into words how happy I am to be spending Christmas with Lina this year in our house.

Last year, Lina's Christmas day was spent in the children’s hospitals bone marrow ward in a sterile dry room. While I was able to visit for a couple of hours in the afternoon on Christmas day, her communication with the rest of the family was done over a webcam that we had setup between her room and various family houses. Very few people were allowed in the room at the time because the fear of infection which could make the patient very sick and complicate treatments. To say last Christmas was difficult would probably be the understatement of a lifetime. It brings me so much joy that this year will be completely different for all of us and that we all have so very much to be thankful for.

However, the harsh reality is that the child cancer ward at Childrens is still full of many children and many families are in the same situation we found ourselves in last year. It will not be a Merry Christmas for them and that is why I'll be running my 5th consecutive Boston Marathon. You guys have all been so great in supporting me over the past 4 years and I'm asking you guys to dig deep one more time. After this years race, I will be taking some time off from running the marathon (more about this at a later date). But before doing so, I would love to say that we were able to raise over 5000 dollars this year and over 22000 over the past 5. I know that its Christmas time and people are on tight budgets and things are crazy, but we are all in this together and hopefully we can find a cure so that no family will need to spend their holidays in a hospital. Again, I thank you all for your support and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. God Bless

This years donation website is

http://www.active.com/donate/tntma/tntmaJSganga2

As always, you can mail checks to me made out to The Leukemia and Lymphoma society at

John Sganga
88 Cliffe Ave
Lexington, MA 02420

My mission to run 5 Boston marathons began on July 14, 2003. On that day, my life as well as that of our family was changed forever. My 9 year old niece Lina was diagnosed with Leukemia. After that day, I watched Lina go through things that no child should ever have to go through. My family and I spent the following 3 weeks making numerous trips to Childrens Hospital's child cancer ward. During those trips, I started to see how amazing both Lina and all people battling cancer really are. No matter how much pain and suffering they go through, all of them always had a smile on their face. They fight the battle and never ask why this has happened to them. They take things one day at a time and truly are special people. So, why run a marathon? Well, people say that one of the hardest things to do in life is to run a marathon. They say you never really know how difficult it is until you actually experience it. Well, I believe a child (or anyone for that matter) battling cancer has it harder than running any road race. So I said if Lina can fight cancer, then I can do something considered almost as difficult and run a marathon. I committed to run and raise as much as I could for cancer research. During my training over the past 3 marathons one quote on a charity runners shirt always stood with me. It went like this:

"If you think running a marathon is difficult, try chemotherapy."

That pretty much sums up nicely why many of us charity runners are out there. These people fighting the disease are true inspirations and heros. If they can fight we can run and we'll both reach our goal.

This year, I will once again be part of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program.

I will be keeping a training blog this year. The blog will contain updates on my training and random thoughts. If you would like to read it, you can click here.

All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. I would like to not only run for Lina and our Team in Training honored team mates, but I would also like to honor or remember anyone you know who is battling or has battled cancer. These people truly are an inspiration to me. So with each donation that I get, if you would like, provide a name of a loved one who has battled or is battling cancer. On race day I will pin a ribbon with their name on my shirt and I will carry their strength with me. After you submit a donation via my pledge site, please fill out the form below with the name of a loved one that you would like me to honor or remember.

Please, help me in this cause to find a cure. I will be truly happy when NO family has to make daily trips to the cancer ward in our hospitals. To make a donation or check progress of donations please visit my donation site at http://www.active.com/donate/tntma/tntmaJSganga2

If you are unable to make a donation via credit card but would still like to donate, please mail your donation to me. If paying by check, make the check payable to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Mail the check along with your name and e-mail address to

John Sganga
88 Cliffe Ave
Lexington, MA 02420

Honor a Friend or Family Member

Please fill out the form below so that I can honor a friend or family member battling cancer. On race day, I will pin a ribbon with their name to my shirt. I would love to have a shirt filled with ribbons that day.

2007 Boston Marathon Running for Lina updates, pictures, and training blog.