On the path to curing cancer

[caption id=”attachment_1626” align=”aligncenter” width=”300” caption=”Me posing after 7 miles”][/caption]Ok. I’m not curing cancer myself. I’m a writer not a scientist. But I am running for Cancer Research.

Yesterday I ran 7 miles, my longest race ever, and I’m back out there again tomorrow to take Prospect Park by storm….at 13 miles an hour.

My friend Marianne and I came up with the idea a year ago to run all the races up to a marathon. Not only would we run 5K, 10K, a half marathon and a marathon but we’d do it in four continents as well. We called it Couch to 42K (or #c242k on Twitter) as we non-runners were going to get off the couch and run a marathon!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w0mP0NAh5I?rel=0&w=640&h=360]

So far we’ve run in London and Morocco and in less than a month, we’ll be winging our way to China to run a half marathon on the Great Wall of China.

Some people asked me if I am scared.

Damn straight I’m scared, I’m running further than I’ve ever run before halfway around the world…

BUT

Running up hills, up stairs, up anything is nothing compared to the people who fight so hard to beat cancer, a disease that will affect one of four people around the globe. Today Brandie, one of the cheeriest person I know on Twitter, is going in for breast cancer surgery. Her spirit is so bright and so many people are rooting for her.

Yes. She is one of the many people we are running for.

3550 people in the US and 850 people in the UK are diagnosed with cancer each day. With survival rates at just shy of 50%, I hope the more support cancer research can get, the better that number will get.

I actually went to a conference last week about Amazon Web Services and how they are making “the cloud” more accessible to us all.

The one speaker who brought applause from the crowd was a representative from Cyclecloud. He talked about their work with Schrödinger, a company that offers molecular-modeling and drug-design software. With their 50,000 core super computer they ran a virtual screen to identify proteins that are responsible for cancer.

Normally a super computer costs at least 20 million so this is out of the reach for most researchers (and I would argue almost all). By using cloud services with 3000 servers at full capacity, Schrodinger were able to do 112 years worth of calculations in three hours at the cost of $4828.85 an hour. This will help make the impossible big science possible. It’s breathtaking to hear that this could enable us to find the cure even faster.

Today, I feel the possibilities are getting brighter. My aunt died over five years ago from cancer. I wish every day that she was still here. So I hope we all can work towards a cure by walking, running, fundraising, supporting, researching, fighting and being there for one another.

I know you won’t all be on the Great Wall with me but your spirit will be. My aunt will be there pushing me on, her voice in my ear “I believe in you, you can do it. When you believe, you can do anything…”