Weekend athletes use sweat equity to battle loved ones' diseases

SAN JOSE, CA (MCT)- Robyn Froerer had seen the ghostly blur of faces that materialized at every race, the pictures pinned to runners' chests _ the quick lined up with the dead.

While training for the recent Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, one of the endurance races in the Bay Area that raises funds to fight deadly diseases, Froerer decided to put the source of her own inspiration to work for her fellow runners.

She went to the cancer ward at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center, where her then-6-year-old daughter was battling for her life against leukemia, one of the blood diseases for which the marathon serves as a fundraiser. Isabelle Jane was gaunt and had lost most of her hair from daily chemotherapy treatments, but her mother carried her down to the nearby track so the other runners could see her. She thought it would be more effective than wearing her daughter's picture on a shirt.

"My motivation was to let those people know who they were running for, to put a face to their cause," Froerer recalled recently. "Isabelle Jane looked to them as her team, the team that was going to save her life. Even after she'd had horrendous chemotherapy, she wanted to go cheer them on, to be at the water stops to let them know, 'If I can be here, you can do this.' "

More and more people embrace this form of sweat equity every year. Some do it because raising money for a cure gives them a sense of power over a disease. But for many, a daunting physical goal can serve as a catharsis, or coping mechanism, or simply jolt them out of their complacency and into the fight they have joined.

In 2007, the top 30 fundraising runs, walks and bike rides raised $1.6 billion, an increase of 12 percent over the previous year, according to a survey by the Journal of Philanthropy. In four years, the Nike Women's Marathone has raised more than $60 million for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

With the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure launching an average of two pink-clad marches against breast cancer every week, not to mention bike rides for ALS and Alzheimer's walks, there's rarely a weekend in America when thousands of people aren't jogging in memory of some loved one.

"It was a way for me to escape how useless and overwhelmed I felt as a mom trying to save my daughter," said Froerer of Burlingame, Calif. "I would go out and pound the pavement when I couldn't pound the cancer.

"When you watch your child being hooked up to a bag labeled biohazard, praying that the poison is going to save her, you feel a sense of comfort knowing there are people out there who are literally running to save her life," Froerer said. "You feel like you're standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people who want to make a difference."

And not just standing _ running. Often the exertion isn't just a memorial, it is itself an expression of grief. "A lot of people talk about how they experience grief in terms more physical than emotional," said Kenneth Doka, author of "Living with Grief: Who We Are, How We Grieve." "They say, 'I felt like somebody punched me in the stomach.' Grief is an energy that's caused by loss, and people put that energy to use in different ways."

When Virginia MacLean's brother-in-law was diagnosed in 1996 with non-Hodgkins lymphoma at 36, she signed up for a 111-mile bike ride to show her solidarity with his struggle. "It just shocked me," said Grace Pataky of Saratoga, Calif., another of the sisters. "She didn't even own a bike. But she was the type of person who had to immediately take action, to do something."

MacLean, who was in the marketing department at Hewlett-Packard, pushed herself farther as her brother-in-law's cancer worsened, competing in a triathlon in Monterey even though she wasn't a strong swimmer. Not long after her brother-in-law died, MacLean was diagnosed with myeloma at 39. After a year and a half of fruitless chemotherapy, she died, leaving behind a 3-year-old daughter and five heartbroken sisters.

"It goes beyond the idea that we can turn this horrible event into something good by raising funds and helping others," Pataky said. "This is a way for us to come together and somehow try to make sense of it. I'm facing the demon that I didn't want to face a year ago, accepting that this happened to my sister, that she's gone. And I don't want her to be gone."

At the recent Komen breast cancer walk, Peninsula literary agent Jillian Manus mobilized her "Broad Squad" to march in support of Tina Frank, a friend undergoing chemotherapy treatments. Manus dressed Team Tina in pink sashes, and walked off with the day's top fundraising honors. "Cancer is really the ugliest of diseases," she said. "I really wanted something pretty, so I thought it would be a great idea to have everybody dressed as beauty pageant queens."

Isabelle Jane Froerer's cancer has been in remission for two years, and, at 10, she's a runner now herself. Her mother knows the race ahead is long, but she has little fear of the metaphoric barrier runners refer to as the wall.

"When I run, my mantra is, 'This is nothing compared to what they've been through,' " Robyn Froerer said after competing in the Rock 'n' Roll race. "If you've watched your child's hair fall out in clumps, if you've listened to her ask you what she did wrong that caused her to get cancer, you realize running 13.1 miles is nothing. You suck it up and try to do it with as much energy, enthusiasm and gratitude as possible."

They are waiting for you. Will you answer?

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© 2008, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).