A good friend (and colleague) here in the Florida Keys needs help, but is afraid to ask. There’s the stigma and the sense that people will look at him differently. So I decided to step in. Here’s the deal.
Our Marathon editor, Alex Rickert, my counterpart in the Middle Keys, clearly went off the rails in recent months and has now gotten himself in a bind. Apparently suffering some fit of altruism, vigor and integrity, Alex decided to run the Boston Marathon.
Yes, THAT Boston Marathon, as in 26.2 miles. That’d be like me running from my desk here on Stock Island to the blinking light on Big Pine. I can’t imagine. I don’t run. I hate running, which was always treated as a punishment for me when I played field hockey, basketball and softball in high school.
“Mandy, if your mouth insists on running during practice, then your legs can follow,” one coach would yell before pointing to the far end of campus and jerking his head dismissively as I set off to run the perimeter of our (sprawling) school grounds.
I’ve never run anything more than a 5K. That’s 3.1 miles. It was the old Turtle Kraals Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving weekend about 23 years ago and it did not go well. I only did it for the t-shirt, but I didn’t do it well. In fact, I threw up atop the Palm Avenue Bridge, although that was likely a self-inflicted result of my poor decisions at Schooner Wharf the night before.
But I digress. Marathons are not for me. And the feeling is mutual, as proven by my single past experience with marathons and the wackos who run them.
While in college about 27 years ago, I was dating a high school cross-country coach from Jersey, who was running the Philadelphia Marathon. I agreed to accompany him, equipped with his Power Bars, some gross sports gel drink and a race map so I could meet him at two or three spots along the way.
Just so you know, marathon runners do NOT take kindly to snide, running-averse blonde chicks who light a cigarette on a public sidewalk while being passed by a pack of self-righteous runners. One guy actually spit on me. So I told him his running tights didn’t leave much to the imagination and they weren’t doing him any favors. Then I said I hoped his nipples chafed until they bled. (Ya gotta love Philly).
But again, this is about our friend, Alex.
It’s actually not the running part that concerns him most right now. (See? I told you he needs help, as in some sort of intervention over bloody Marys.)
Rather, Alex, in his disgusting good-heartedness, is worried about letting people down, not by tossing his cookies in downtown Boston, but by falling short of the fundraising goal he must reach to participate in this self-inflicted torture project.
Each team member has to commit to raising $10,000 for the Dana-Farber challenge. Alex’s goal is $15,000, but if he can’t find enough generous friends to reach the $10K threshold, then his credit card gets charged the difference. (I tried to tell him there are much cheaper ways to see Boston, but he’s committed to this insanity.)
Alex is running the Boston Marathon as part of the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. (God, he’s SUCH a better person than I.)
Race officials each year allow groups representing legit charities to participate without having to qualify for Boston by successfully completing a prior marathon in a certain amount of time.
So, come April, Alex gets to run 26.2 miles in a city that has plenty of more appealing things to do. (Hell, even Paul Revere had a horse for his big Boston outing.)
But honestly, as soon as he told me which team he joined — Dana-Farber — I stopped him mid-sentence.
“Say no more,” I told him. “I’m in. I lost my grandmother to breast cancer when I was 8, and decades later, Dana-Farber made sure my sister-in-law beat it.”
Though Alex was reluctant to ask people to donate, I had no such problem. So please, scan the QR code below to donate to Alex’s fundraising page or email alex@keysweekly.com or me at mandy@keysweekly.com.
While I’m still convinced there are a thousand better things to do in Boston, I’m fully committed to helping Alex Rickert help others beat cancer — as long as it doesn’t involve me running.
