Adrienne Leigh Boardman, August 18, 1987 – October 1, 2009

Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our loved ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy ~ Author Unknown

Yesterday at approximately 11:15am my stepdaughter Adrienne passed away from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

As she had done for more than half of her young life she fought her disease courageously until the very end, a disease that was described to us as “the good cancer” when she was diagnosed on December 12, 1996 at the age of 9.

Adrienne took her illness in stride right from the beginning and even after her Hodgkin’s Lymphoma had become refractory and it became increasingly clear that the odds were against her, she never gave up hope that one day a cure would be found for her and others in her situation. She truly lived life to the fullest and never let cancer get in the way of achieving her goals and dreams. Although she had missed almost two years of high school while undergoing two stem cell transplants she graduated with honors with the rest of her class and only last May joined the ranks of  college graduates when she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Claremont McKenna. She even managed to fulfill one of her biggest dreams by living in New York City for six months while attending Columbia University as a visiting student in her junior year.

Three days before she was hospitalized on August 23rd, Adrienne was in Santa Barbara celebrating her 22nd birthday and her brother’s 21st. She was ready to start graduate school at UNLV the following week and only let her mother cancel her enrollment after she had been in hospital for a week and realized she would not be able to catch up. Nothing ever stopped her from living as normal a life as she could possible live and she truly lived up to her own words: “Though I’ve now had cancer for most of my life, I no longer plan my life around it. Instead I try to plan cancer around my life.”

Although she is no longer with us, Adrienne will live on in all of us whose lives she had touched.

It was Adrienne’s illness that pushed me to join The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training Program back in 1997, just a few months after she had been diagnosed with Stage III Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. My friend Sam did not want to run so we signed up for the Tahoe Century, which we rode that following June and then again in June of 1998.

Then David and I moved to Santa Barbara where at the time no LLS Chapter existed and I went back to my regular running routine after having spent two years on the bike.

In the fall of 2004 I walked down State Street and saw a flyer in one of the shop windows that caught my eye thanks to the familiar purple color. I found out that a week later a information meeting was to be held to sign people up for the Los Angeles Marathon. The rest is history and over the years my thoughts of Adrienne and so many like her have gotten me through the rough parts of training and races on more than one occasion. As a Team in Training Honoree she inspired many and helped raise enormous amounts of funds for hematological cancer research, she even walked the Honolulu Marathon and a few Half Marathons herself.

It is only befitting that I would dedicate today’s TIaRT to Adrienne.

Distance and Race Details: Albie Half Marathon (Albie was Adrienne’s code name), sometime in the fall

Location: New York City (Adrienne’s favorite city)

Proceeds: all race proceeds would be donated to the Alese Coco Fight2Win Campaign and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

Expo: the theme of the Expo would be FOOD (which Adrienne loved more than anything). There would be healthy samples from all of her favorite New York Restaurants (we want to keep it local), mainly Sushi! There would be motivational speakers who have been through cancer treatments, inspiring the rest that “Yes, YOU CAN DO THIS!”

Race kit: the goody bag would include PowerBar^® Energy Bites (her favorite walking snack), Emergen-C (her favorite electrolyte drink), a plain techno running shirt in navy blue or white that could be used for training, with a small icon on the top right of her with her dog (cartoon like)

Medal: Men would receive a regular Albie Medal, women would get a delicate necklace with an “AB” pendant

Who knows, maybe one day this might actually be an idea that could come to fruition!

Today’s Running Tip: There will be no running tip today!