My heart is broken, my eyes are weary and in less than an hour I will run 26.2 miles for a country in mourning a nation in need. A nation in serious need of love and hope. While nothing can fill the space of the crisis that has fallen upon us, all of us can extend a hand to those in need to remind them that we are here. Let’s come together and heal the broken hearts. We need to end this and it all comes down to love: “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”- L. Buscaglia. This is exactly what the world needs more of in order to heal and stop these senseless tragedies. The craziness in this world makes me so sad. Each and every day there are people who are struggling to stay alive and then someone thinks it is ok to take the lives of so many. This brings me to a man who is so strong and fighting with every breath to beat pancreatic cancer. Kevin is a very accomplished distance runner and helped found the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, MN. He has been battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer for over a year now. Here’s a great article about him http://www.superiortelegram.com/event/article/id/67229/ “He was a hard-core member of America’s first running boom in the 1970s and ’80s, racing nearly every weekend during the summer. He finished Grandma’s Marathon seven times; had a marathon best of 2 hours, 36 minutes in Miami in 1985 and ran a Las Vegas half marathon in 1:10 at age 40 in 1999; and completed the Edmund Fitzgerald 100K race of 62.1 miles. “ If I was doing dedications at the time I ran Grandma’s this past June, I surely would have ran that one for him. So I will run for him today. He’s run a few 5Ks since his diagnosis, but it’s been very tough for him. There is only one way Kevin looks at this: He wants to live and he’s going to do whatever he can to keep going and so am I. Lynn Lascola I run today for your cousin Kevin Peters, to show our Nation that there are amazing, strong people out there. Fighting with everything they have to make things right. We need more people like Kevin Peters, it’s time to step up and bring out your best, for Kevin, for Connecticut and for the hope and love for the world and for this awful disease that is pancreatic cancer.