GUILDERLAND — Debra O’Brien is running for life — but not her own.

She gets up every morning at 5:30 to run three or four miles before she goes to work as a physical education teacher at Farnsworth Middle School.

She wears the reason around her wrist.

O’Brien’s plastic bracelet bears the name of her uncle who died of leukemia four years ago and of her cousin who survived the disease.

It also bears the names of seven people in the Guilderland school community. One of them is Thomas Farrelly, a beloved high school math teacher who died in April after battling leukemia. Another is the daughter of a Guilderland Elementary School teacher; the young girl has just been diagnosed with leukemia.

Five others are Guilderland students. Sixth-grader Kameron Conner, a Farnsworth student, has survived leukemia after braving a bone-marrow transplant.
Another Farnsworth sixth-grader, Dominic Tralongo, is undergoing chemotherapy, O’Brien said. Her brilliant smile evaporated as she went on to say, "He’s allowed to wear a baseball cap to school" because the chemotherapy has caused hair loss.

An eighth-grader with a form of Hotchkins disease is in chemo right now, O’Brien said.

Another name on her bracelet belongs to a fourth-grade girl at Lynnwood Elementary School, and the last name is of a girl who was once a student of O’Brien and is now at the high school.
"All of these kids touch me," she said. "I’ve had them as students or they will be coming to me....When I get up in the morning and it’s raining or I’m tired, I just look at the bracelet and I think what these kids have been through." And then, said O’Brien, her run seems like nothing.

And yet, the event she is preparing for has come to mean everything to her.

She is a runner for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Team in Training.

She is preparing to complete a full marathon, 26.2 miles, in San Francisco on Oct. 23. O’Brien is raising money by getting pledges for each mile she runs as well as through other events. Her goal is to raise $4,000.

Challenges
"I’m not a true runner," said O’Brien.

The rigorous training is new for her, and difficult, although her athleticism comes naturally.

O’Brien plays tennis, softball, and basketball.
Her father was an athletic director at Bergen County Community College in New Jersey and she describes her mother as a nurse and an athlete. "Her father wanted her to be a secretary," said O’Brien, but her mother was an independent woman and left her home in Canada for New York City where she pursued nursing.
O’Brien herself left her New Jersey home for Miami University in Ohio with plans of studying accounting to go into business. "Math was my strongest subject," she said. "Instead I pursued what made me happier."

She is an athlete who loves working with kids.

O’Brien, like her mother, was an independent young woman and ready for adventure. She did her student teaching in Germany in a Department of Defense school.
"I was the first physical-education person to do it," she said.

She has also worked with Outward Bound and is trained in Project Adventure.

She uses that training at Farnsworth where middle-school students perform such feats as using a zip line to go 400 yards across a field.
"I like teaching kids how to challenge themselves," said O’Brien. "It promotes growth and trust and gives them a real sense of accomplishment."
The Project Adventure program is very popular, she said, and it "really improves self-esteem."
"You can see a kid who is afraid and help him overcome that fear, and then he’s set," she said.

"Gangbusters"

O’Brien herself relishes a challenge.

She received a flyer in the mail from the Team in Training and was intrigued.
"Every five minutes someone new is diagnosed with a blood cancer — leukemia, lymphoma, and myleloma; every 10 minutes, someone dies," it said. "In fact, leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under the age of 20."
As O’Brien read the flyer, she said, "My first thought was I lost my uncle to an acute leukemia...He was diagnosed on a Friday and died on Saturday."
Then she thought of her cousin. "My cousin is a survivor," she said. "He had a bone-marrow transplant."
Although the cause of blood-related cancers remains unknown, literature from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society states, steady advances in research and treatment are bringing cures closer. "In fact, thanks to research funded by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the survival rate for the most common form of childhood leukemia has improved from 4 percent in 1960 to over 80 percent today. Bone marrow transplantations as well as chemotherapy — the backbone for treatment of most forms of cancer — stemmed from leukemia research."

O’Brien decided to find out more and attended a chapter meeting. Although she had never done a long-distance run before, she set her sights on the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco and set a goal of raising $4,000.
"I’m going to go gangbusters," she said. "It’s making me feel good, working for such a worthy cause. This is the number-one killer of children ages two to 15."

She has already sent out letters, looking for backers and has set up a website: www.active.com/donate.tntnyvt/tntnyvtDOBrie1. She has also scheduled her first fund-raiser, a car wash and bottle drive this Saturday, June 18, at Albany Beverage on Carman Road from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
"I’ve got boys in sixth grade putting flyers in mailboxes," she said of spreading the word about the car wash.

About 75 percent of what O’Brien raises will go directly to the society while the remaining 25 percent will go towards the Team in Training program for such expenses as coaching, lodging, and race entry.

O’Brien has already spent her own money on such necessities as two good pairs of running sneakers, at $100 a pair.
"I’m going to do whatever I need to do to cross the finish line," she said.

O’Brien had never before thought about running a marathon. Right now, she’s running three to four miles on weekday mornings and six to eight on Saturdays. She averages about 10-and-a-half minutes a mile.
O’Brien sandwiches her practices in between her busy teaching career and family schedule. This past weekend, for example, she was going to a baseball game for her nine-year-old son, Connor, and was the "costume mom" for the dance recital of her six-year-old daughter, Clare.
Her daughter will ask, "Are you running again, Mommy"" and her husband is a little concerned about the effect on her knees. But he is supportive and "says the whole family will fly out to see me in the marathon," O’Brien said.

She will gradually build to running 12, then 14, then 18 miles, she said, before she completes a 20-mile practice run.
Asked if she enjoyed her runs, O’Brien smiled and said, "I’m not quite there yet."
She has had knee surgery, she said. "My knee caps go out to the side," O’Brien said, and dislocation is a problem.

Consequently, she said, she might complete the marathon with a combination of walking and running.
"I don’t care what my time is," she said. "This is not about me."
In its mission statement, the Team in Training says, "We will use endurance training as a symbol of hope...."
Looking at the bracelet on her wrist, O’Brien said, "I’m running in honor of all these courageous people."