Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 3/30/2022
BOSTON – Every year, tens of thousands of people run 26.2 miles, from Hopkinton to the state capital in the Boston Marathon. Many of those people are looking to raise money for causes and, this year, Erica Horowitz is one of them.
“I’ve always run,” said the 2016 Longmeadow High School graduate. Horowitz will be running in the 126th Boston Marathon as part of the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge. “My dad has run Boston a few times and Hartford,” she said, referring to the marathons hosted by each city. “I’ve always wanted to run a marathon,” she said, adding that she has participated in 5K races before, but this will be her first marathon.
Horowitz decided 2022 was the year to run in the marathon after moving to Boston. She said, “I would be so mad if I watched it this year without participating.”
It has been fairly easy to train, Horowitz said. Dana-Farber hosts weekend training sessions for the athletes and teams. “It’s on the course, too, so you get used to it, the ups and downs,” she said of the eight municipalities through which the marathon route runs. Until recently, the farthest distance she had run was 18 miles, but she was planning to run 20 miles on March 26, with four weeks left before the April 18 marathon.
“I’m nervous but I’m also really excited,” Horowitz commented.
Horowitz, who works at Dana-Farber, signed up to run the marathon as a team with two co-workers. The three are fundraising together but each has set a goal of $12,500. Of their collective $37,500 they hope to raise, the three have reached about $22,000.
Horowitz is running in memory of her cousin, Dave Rappaport, who died of cancer in 2019. She said the disease had already metastasized by the time he was diagnosed, just a couple of months before he died. Horowitz is also running in honor of her grandmother, Sara Horowitz, a breast cancer survivor. Both family members were treated by Dana-Farber doctors.
The thing Horowitz wants people to know is that the money goes toward research. “One hundred percent of every single dollar raised by the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team supports the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,” she said.
Horowitz is a clinical research coordinator at Dana-Farber in the Center for Prevention of Progression, which means she helps coordinate work done with patients before they are symptomatic.
She reflected, “It’s amazing to see how much hope they get from new treatments.”
Donations to Horowitz’s goal can be made by visiting https://danafarber.jimmyfund.org/site/TR;jsessionid=00000000.app20020a?px=2157063&fr_id=1780&pg=personal&NONCE_TOKEN=EB9F0CF97701A05D9F85C40515A21BF5; mailing a check, payable to “Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge,” to Erica Horowitz 1213 Beacon St., Apt 5 Brookline, MA 02446 or by encouraging a workplace to make a matching gift.