Marathoner aided leukemia cause
By: Justin Feil
For more than four months, Michelle Drimmer kept a hospital bracelet on her wrist.
It wasn’t hers. The bracelet belonged to a little boy, Ryan, in Burlington, Vt. who has leukemia.
“People were supposed to ask me about it,” said Drimmer, a 1998 Princeton High graduate. “It was a way of informing the general public and trying to spread interest.”
When asked, Drimmer, who just completed her sophomore year at Middlebury College, told how she was training to run the Suzuki Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in San Diego as a member of the Team-In-Training (TNT).
Members of the program, organized by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, pledged to raise a certain amount of money toward research and, in return, received admittance to the marathon plus financial assistance for travel and accommodations. In 1999, 4,300 TNT runners at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon raised more than $12 million.
“I raised close to $3,600,” said Drimmer, who finished the marathon June 4 in just over three hours, 45 minutes. “I had the support in Middlebury, but most of it came from friends and family and corporate sponsors in the Princeton area. I couldn’t have done it without the community support.
“It was a pretty long process. In February, I started sending out letters that included pledge cards. Some people pledged X amount of dollars per mile and some just gave a one-time sum. It took several months to get the money in.”
In the meantime, Drimmer and another Middlebury student, Haley Cooper who ran in honor of a friend’s leukemia-stricken sister, had training to worry about.
While at PHS, Drimmer played field hockey and ran the 800 meters and mile and occasionally the two-mile run, and as a freshman at Middlebury she played JV field hockey. But the 19-year-old had ever attempted a marathon. The TNT team members, however, also receive regular personalized training tips and can attend organized runs.
“We kind of trained on our own,” admitted Drimmer, who quit the Middlebury club water polo team to begin training. “We were part of the Burlington group, which is 50 minutes away. It was tough to drive almost two hours back-and-forth just for a run so we did a lot of training together near campus.”
And even though Drimmer’s training dropped off during finals and after she had her wisdom teeth pulled in the weeks leading up to the 26.2-mile race, the base she had built running in the less-than-ideal winter weather of northern New York State proved good enough.
“I never wore shorts once all year,” said Drimmer, whose 3:46:04 left her fifth in the 19-years-old and under age division, 309th place out of 8,348 women and 1,361st out of 15,167 finishers.
“I wanted to finish in four hours, so it was really great,” she added. “There’s a (music) band every mile which helped. And the camaraderie was like nothing I’ve encountered.
“We had so many people cheering for TNT. It got to the point where people behind us were like, ‘What about us?’ It definitely keeps you going. I had people run up and run with me for a couple yards and tell me how great it was I was doing it.”
Having completed one marathon, Drimmer, who will serve as a camp counselor in the Catskills this summer, has already begun thinking of her next.
“I’d love to do the New York City Marathon in November,” she said. “Or maybe the Disney World Marathon. In terms of preparing myself, I don’t think I’d start so early. I think we peaked in March. I’m definitely looking to PR next time. I’m looking to do better. I haven’t sat down and thought about a (goal) time, but I definitely want to do another one.
“There was so much more that went into it than just running one normally. We had a (running) expo, and we partied with all 4,500 other TNT people before and after the race. We had speakers and it was such an experience. The entire weekend was one of my most exciting weekends ever.”