Written in black ink midway down the page of a red spiral notebook is a short list of “Happy Places” I jotted down on a midweek morning a few years ago to reference whenever I was feeling overwhelmed, upset, etc., and on the top of that list reads: Sitting in the backseat of Tim’s 1984 Silver Honda Accord driving in-between Palos Verdes and Claremont with Tim, Peter, and Mary. AKA crisscrossing in the dark along the many freeways we drove *nearly* every week between our Dad and Mom’s house in the late eighties.
I remember the soft grey interior enveloping my lanky legs and allowing me to drift off daydreaming about my future husband, Keanu Reeves, while Tim blared the *current* hits from Sting, Enya, Peter Gabriel, and Paul Simon. Every drive was a stew of talking, teasing, laughing, and silence through the hour plus drive (depending on traffic) across Los Angeles. All of us in our heads, our hearts tugging between both places, together. As the youngest of four kids, I spent my childhood observing a lot, and am certain that there are no cooler humans on earth, than my three older siblings.
Screen left to right: Tim, Mary, Yours Truly, and Peter. October, 2010.
The Boston Marathon is special. "Wait, what? I thought we were in LA?" Stay with me....
It took seven try’s before I earned my first BQ, and although the qualifying system is controversial, I like it. I think it’s okay to want and need to work hard in order to achieve a spot on the starting line, especially the one that starts in Hopkinton Massachusetts. I have completed the race three times, 2005, 2015, and 2018, and have qualified numerous times within the last two decades, but I haven’t felt a burning desire to race there until I failed to earn a qualifying time during the Surf City Marathon in September, 2021. That race was a humble slog sprinkled with possibility. I came away from it intrigued of how well I could run once fully repaired from nagging hamstring injuries and self-doubt, which is why I quickly registered to run the course again a few months later in February, 2022.
Thankfully, I was ready to race Surf City again by early February, and felt a sliver of my former running self take control as I crossed the line in 3:23 hrs., It was not my best time, but twenty minutes faster than what I ran in September, and a nice buffer qualifying time for Boston, 2023.
The rest of 2022, I was locked in a gazing triathlon haze. Nearly every week from Valentines Day onward was stacked with rigorous training leading up to Oceanside, 70.3 in April, Ironman St. George in May, The Santa Barbara Triathlon in August, The Malibu Triathlon in September, and the biggie of them ALL, my “A” race of the season, Ironman Arizona in November. Finally, I wanted to cap the year off with how it started, racing a marathon, so I picked the geographically desirable California International Marathon (CIM) held in Sacramento.
I loosely figured I would run the Boston marathon in 2023, but it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind until my brother Tim (the owner of the aforementioned tin can sized Honda Accord) reached out in mid-October to let me know he put in an application to run the Boston Marathon as a fundraising effort for the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge.
To recap from an earlier post, Tim was diagnosed with Follicular Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma while prepping for open heart surgery in January 2022, (yes, you read that right), and although he had fully recovered from his heart surgery well before October, and had mentioned wanting to run the Boston marathon earlier in the year, he was currently in the throes of immunotherapy treatment, so I assumed he would want to bump his marathon pursuit until 2024, nope, he wanted to run it in 2023.
Tim and I shared a plane for our first Skydiving adventure to celebrate our Uncle Len's 60th birthday in 2000.
Naturally, I was thrilled with the idea to share a marathon with Tim. It was his pioneering spirit to explore the long distance that inspired me to jump in, so even though he hadn’t trained or raced a marathon since 1995, I thought it was an incredible goal, and with the “greenlight” from his doctors, one he could certainly reach. However, when we first started talking about Boston, it seemed like we’d both be running our own races; separately, hours apart, but the day before the CIM marathon in early December, that all changed for me.
I had just sat down at a Starbucks in downtown Sacramento a few blocks from my hotel, filling time until I could check in to my room, when Tim texted our Kelly Siblings group chat that he had a partial response to immunotherapy treatment, but it did not pan out like they hoped. My stomach dropped through my chair onto the floor. I did not know what to say. Or type. Rather I sat in silence, clutching a bottle of orange juice, and said to myself, I am about to run another marathon while my freshly fifty-year old brother has endured both open heart surgery and very challenging cancer treatments, all within the last ten months, WTF? Hasn’t he been through enough? But, yeah, T, go run a marathon tomorrow.
I started that race with a fire in my belly that unfortunately my legs could not sustain for longer than fourteen miles. I wanted to run hard and fast in Tim’s honor, but my ragged left hamstring didn’t allow it. I finished the race, but it was a rough one.
Over the next few weeks, and then into the first couple months of the year, I felt different. I wanted to rest rather than push, I had no desire to train, no races I was excited about, life felt more fragile than ever, and I simply wanted to be still.
Meanwhile, Tim was picking up the pace with his training for Boston.
Yep, even while being ravaged by powerful drugs to beat back his cancer, working full time, being a Dad and husband, Tim was still trucking along with his marathon training, including double-digit long runs every Saturday. Therefore, in late January I lobbed out an idea to him, this little sister’s dream, “Is it okay if I run the marathon with you?”
“Yeah, that would be awesome!” Tim replied, (maybe not verbatim, but close enough).
And there it was, that spark I’d been missing lit up my runner’s soul again.
Then in mid-March, just as I was finding my training groove again, and felt lighter in my heart, Tim sent out another message to the Kelly Siblings group chat, his recent scans revealed that his cancer was in remission.
Mary will be with us in Boston, too, but cheering vs. running.:) Photo circa 1995.
When I get home next week, I plan to dig up that red spiral notebook to add another line to my “Happy Places,” because running the famed 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Boston on Monday with Tim, (and Des) is going to be a party. It won’t be as comfortable as puttering along the 605 freeway listening to “Sledgehammer”, every marathon contains moments of anguish and pain, but *this* year running the Boston Marathon will mostly be a chance to celebrate how powerful, vibrant, and remarkable our minutes on earth truly are, and the courage it takes to live each one.
If you would like to learn more about Tim’s story, and donate to his fundraising for Dana Farber, please CLICK HERE:
Also, if you want to follow along on Monday, all the tracking information can be found HERE:
Bib Numbers:
Tim: 24761
Taryn: 15074
The song and video choice this week is a new twist on a classic. Mary, you might like this version?