To the uninitiated, it appears impossible. Twenty-six miles of pavement stretch before you. There is no conceivable way your legs could ever run that far.
Yet the miles melt by, the scenery changes. Your heart pounds and finally, at about 20 miles, you hit the wall. Your body breaks down and you sense, absolutely, you can’t, won’t, make it to the end. But somehow, your legs keep moving. There’s the finish line. You cross it and hear the cheering.
The triumph, though, isn’t for you to keep all to yourself. This is the story of “Team in Training,” a group of about 1,200 Chicagoans who will be running or walking marathons all over America this summer and fall.
Some will take on the LaSalle Banks Chicago Marathon on Oct. 11, others are traveling as far as Anchorage, San Diego, Honolulu and Dublin for marathons. They are not, in most cases, accomplished athletes. Until now, many had never even run a mile, but all are inspired by a common goal: finding a cure for leukemia.
River Grove resident Cathy Wilsek says of her daughter Paige, who died last August after a three-year battle with the disease: “Strangers would come up to her and say, `Gosh, did anyone ever tell you you are just so beautiful?” Cathy will walk the Chicago Marathon this fall in Paige’s memory, and her husband Richard, who had never exercised much before, is running the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon in Anchorage on June 20.
Paige was the Wilseks’ only child. “She was our life,” Richard Wilsek says. She was just 9 and about to undergo a bone marrow transplant when she died. “My daughter fought leukemia for three years,” Wilsek adds. “What’s 4 hours and 20 minutes of running, or less? It’s like nothing.”
By lacing on his running shoes, Wilsek has definitely accomplished something, raising more than $4,000 in Paige’s name for leukemia research.
Like his fellow “Team In Training” members, he worked up to marathon endurance step by step. The Leukemia Society of America provides coaches and physiologists for the program who start volunteers out slowly, a few miles at a time. Clinics on nutrition and injury prevention are a must.
Each marathoner must raise a minimum amount. The amount they must raise varies from marathon to marathon. For the Anchorage race, for example, it’s $3,900; for Chicago, $1,100. Runners raise the money by soliciting donations from friends, family, colleagues. Though the bulk of the money goes toward research and patient care, part of it covers the runners’ travel expenses.
“Every runner and every walker runs or walks in honor of a leukemia patient, and I think it makes all the difference,” says “Team in Training” director Cindy Kaitcer. She says these “patient heroes” provide runners with the motivation they need to finish the race. “Of those who go through our 4 1/2-month training program, about 99 percent actually cross the finish line.”
“If you’re running a marathon, and you hit the wall at mile 20, you can stop,” Kaitcer adds. “But if you have leukemia, you can’t just say, `Oh, no, leukemia, stop.’ Your pain doesn’t go away.”
Leukemia causes the body to produce too many abnormal white blood cells. The word leukemia literally means “white blood.” When an overabundance of these cells are produced, patients can lose the ability to fight infections, become anemic and suffer from excessive bleeding and bruising when blood won’t clot. According to the Leukemia Society of American, more than 26,000 Americans will contract leukemia or related blood diseases this year.
Most affected are the youngest victims. Next to accidents, the disease remains the nation’s No. 1 killer of children, though about 75 percent of the youngsters who contract it recover.
Nine-year-old Cindy Edwards of Arlington Heights hopes to be one of them. Cindy has acute lymphocytic leukemia, which is the most common form of leukemia in children. It progresses rapidly, with abnormal white blood cells called lymphocytes appearing in the lymph glands and bone marrow.
After a remission, Cindy suffered a relapse and is undergoing chemotherapy. She remains upbeat about her recovery, and takes her cue from her favorite band. “I love the Spice Girls. And they have a thing called Girl Power, that girls can do anything if they put their minds to it!”
That’s also the mindset of Kally Fraser, a “Team in Training” member who’s running in Cindy’s honor in the Anchorage marathon. “I have Cindy’s picture in my bedroom, and every morning when I wake up, I look at it. And I think if she can go through what she’s going through, with the grace and style she’s showing, and her parents, then (this) is something that I can do too,” Fraser says.
Pictures of heroes
“Many people wear pictures of their patient heroes, or wear mementos, or wear their patient hero’s name on their back,” says Kaitcer. “And I think that is the special inspiration.”
It’s inspiration that rakes in big bucks. The marathoners running in San Diego and Anchorage are expected to raise more than $1 million for the Leukemia Society. The teams training for the Chicago, Dublin and Honolulu marathons are projected to raise $2 million.
“When we first got involved in `Team in Training,’ Cindy was in full remission,” says her father, Bob Edwards. “She had had enough of leukemia. And so when a friend of mine came to me and said she wanted to run the marathon in Cindy’s honor, we at first said no. Then, ironically, two days before she ran that marathon, Cindy was diagnosed as having a relapse.
“It’s been an enormous source of strength for her and for us, to know that there are people out there who care, and who are out there doing something to raise money. Because the only long-term hope most of these people have is that the research keeps going on.”
For the Wilseks, Paige’s spirit is the wind at their backs. “When I run, I hear all the songs we used to sing and listen to, how I’d take her to see the sunrise at Montrose Harbor. . . . So all those memories, that’s what gets your drive up, what keeps you going,” Richard Wilsek says.
Cathy Wilsek says she hears Paige’s voice during her weekly workouts: “I know she’s got her hand behind me saying `Come on Mom, just another couple of steps and you’ve got your five miles for the day!’ I just feel her all around me.”
“And I imagine a big leukemia cell in front of me that I just am grabbing, to just squeeze and get rid of.”
Kaitcer hopes clinical trials currently underway will bring researchers closer to their goal of ridding the world of leukemia. “We have come so far. In 1960, if someone was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the survival rate was about 4 percent. It was basically a death sentence. Now with `Team in Training,’ we’re going to raise about $44 million nationwide.”
Because of all the money going into research, survival rates have increased almost 80 percent for acute lymphocytic leukemia. “We’re hoping for a cure by the year 2000,” Kaitcer adds.
But until the day comes when no patient is in danger of dying from leukemia, the runners of “Team in Training” will keep up their pace — marking off the miles in Anchorage, San Diego, Dublin and here in Chicago, using their healthy bodies to try to bring health back to those who can’t do the running themselves.
———-
For information on the Leukemia Society’s “Team in Training” program, call 312-726-0003.
Melissa Ross is a CLTV News reporter. Her televised report on the “Team in Training” will air Thursday and Friday on CLTV News.
