I don’t put a whole lot on this blog anymore for several reasons.  However, this is definitely worth the time for me.  Since the vast majority of the people I have on my friends list on this page have nothing to do with IWA and wrestling, I will have to give you a back story so you know what I’m talking about.

One of the first wrestlers that I worked with and thus became friends with was a guy named Roland.  He wrestles as Rollin’ Hard.  Anyway, several years ago he was diagnosed with colon cancer.  He fought it into remission and had a lot of support from fans, friends and family.  He borrowed from the Lance Armstrong Live Strong campaign and created his own motto…LIVE HARD…BEATING CANCER TILL IT’S BLACK & BLUE.  That is the tshirt that I mention in my writeup later.  Moving along, the cancer came back and spread into more places in his body.  Doctors gave him 12 – 24 months to live.

He sought more medical advice and was given an option to undergo a radical surgery that would try to remove as much of the spreading cancer cells as possible.  He was told that the surgery could prolong his life by 6 years (and thus hopefully allowing enough time for something else to possibly be discovered by then) or it could take 6 months off his life due to the wear and tear on his body.

Roland decided that it was worth the risk to try and prolong his life for his 2 children and his wife and he underwent the surgery last week.  They removed his spleen, gall bladder and some of his pancreas.

Roland is currently struggling to recover from this surgery and was put on life support machines to assist with his breathing the other night.  He has fought it with everything that he has and if all goes well, he might get off the ventilator tonight if he doesn’t regress.

Now that I have given you the backstory, I will now tell you about my attempt to help this dear friend and his family but also help me in the meantime.  I’m not in the best shape of my life and I can’t seem to find the motivation to work out and get into shape.  If you continue reading, I think I have found a way to gain that motivation.

Today, I signed up for the Chicago Distance Classic with Stacy. She loves doing the half marathons and has completed 3 of them. She’s been trying to get me to do one with her and well the thought of walking 13.1 miles in 4 hours just never seemed like something that I would want to do…until now.

Usually these events are done by people that are fundraising for cancer or other charities that are near and dear to their hearts. As some of you know, Stacy has leukemia that is in remission and that is why she started doing these half marathons in order to raise money for research in that field.

We have decided that we will walk this half marathon (I’ve gone on several 8 mile walks with her but never 13.1) while wearing Live Hard tshirts. However, I need extra motivation to make sure that I can make it the extra 5 miles and so I’m going to ask for friends that want to help Rollin and his family out to also help me out by giving me the extra motivation needed to finish this walk.

If you want to help Rollin and can afford to do so, you can send a donation too me by going to ….

All the money donated to the paypal account, I will then give to Rollin and his family to help with their expenses.

The race is on Sunday August 10th in Chicago along the lakefront.

You can go to chicagodistanceclassic dot com for more information on the race and if you want to pay the entry fee, you can enter and walk in your Live Hard shirts with us. If you don’t already have a Live Hard shirt but would like to walk in the event wearing one, we will try to have them at the Kings of the Crimson Mask show (August 2nd in Joliet) for you to purchase.

Thank you.