All About Family by Jim Osterman

For Sasha Buzzetta it is all about family.

A few years ago her whole family – parents and their grown kids -- left upstate New York to move to Atlanta. This March she will be doing the ING Georgia Marathon – her first Team In Training event.

She is doing it in honor of her brother Phillip, who underwent treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma last year, and her Uncle Anthony, who recently lost his fight with colon cancer.

“There has been so much cancer in my family sometimes it has felt like there was nothing we could do,” she said.

She connected with TNT when she was approached about donating a massage -- she owns Ananda Massage in Buckhead – as a raffle prize for another TNT runner’s fundraiser. The more she heard about the program, and the work of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the more she saw an opportunity to do something about her family’s fight against cancer.

“There is a lot of it in our family history,” she said. “This is something I can do to make a difference.”

And while she is new to endurance-event training, her grounding as a licensed massage therapist has been an unexpected asset. She had been interested in the discipline since high school, attracted by the notion that mind, body and spirit needed to be in balance.

But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago when, like so many others in the corporate world, she was laid off that she rekindled her interest.

“I was looking for jobs like the one I had been laid off from and I didn’t feel good physically,” she said. “Then I had a dream of building a wellness center and wrote that down. The next day I saw an ad for massage schools and started looking into it. And I started feeling better.”

And one of the chance benefits of her new path was connecting to Team In Training, and much like the family move from New York several years ago, expect to see a passionate army of Buzzettas on ING event day.

“Everyone is so excited about this,” she said.

While the war with cancer is best joined using medicine and science, Sasha and the Buzzetta family remind us never to underestimate the restorative potential of a family’s love.

Want to support Sasha on the course of the ING Georgia Marathon? Come out and volunteer at the Team In Training water stop at mile 5. Call the TNT office, (404) 720-7842.

About the author, Jim Osterman and his wife, Carol, have been a part of the Team In Training family for years now. You can join him on the 2010 Rock 'n' Roll San Diego TEAM.

Georgia Tech Students Running to Make a Difference

Todd Schmidt and Justin Levine may seem like your typical college students. Todd, a senior and Justin, a junior at Georgia Tech, enjoy sports, traveling and hanging out with their friends.

Oh, and they are also helping cure cancer.

Todd, Justin and about forty of their college friends have signed up for Team In Training (TNT) ; a program benefiting The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. As part of TNT, the participants are trained by expert coaches and staff to complete the Charles Harris 10K Run for Leukemia in February or the ING Georgia Marathon in March. In return, the team hopes to raise $20,000 to fight blood cancer.

“I do it because I think it’s a good way for students to give back,” says Todd. “I had a friend who was diagnosed with leukemia while we were in high school and it really hits home. Blood cancer can really hit people our age so it’s easy to raise money for something that affects so many people.”

And this isn’t the first time Todd has taken part in Team In Training. Taking the lead from his parents who have done the program many times, Todd first signed up three years ago. He gathered a few of his friends to also join him that year and eight of them finished their event. Last year, when Justin signed on to help lead the team, the event—and their impact--- grew. In the first two years combined they have raised $19,000 for the cause.

This year, with even more people on board, they are determined to reach that $20,000 mark. “I’ve kind of become addicted to it,” says Todd. “It’s easy to do because it’s just such a great opportunity to make a difference.”

“It's especially important to me that we recruit more participants each year, and ultimately raise more money,” Justin says. “Team In Training can never be just about me or Todd, the goal is to make TNT a fixture among Tech students for years long after we're gone. I think students are always looking for some sort of challenge but won't actively pursue something like Team In Training. Hopefully what we've done is opened the door for Team In Training at Tech and provided that opportunity. Next year should be even bigger.”

If you'd like to support Justin, Todd and the other Georgia Tech students in their pursuit of raising funds for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, please go to http://pages.teamintraining.org/ga/Georgia10/GeorgiaTech