Jennifer Kramer (pictured above in the middle of the crowd) recently ran her first half marathon, the 21K Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2012 in Argentina. She ran for Team Fox, in honor of her father who has had Parkinson’s disease for several years. She has raised nearly $5,000 for Team Fox and has a 10K coming up in Chile. Below, she recounts her experience and looks ahead to her first marathon.

I am still in a bit of shock over actually finishing the half, and in under 2 hours (1 hour 40 minutes to be exact)!  I am not a runner. I don’t really like to run but a co-worker of mine ran the NYC Marathon for Team Fox in 2007 and that helped motivate me.  The year that she ran was very soon after my father was officially diagnosed with PD.  He had been diagnosed about 5 years earlier with familial tremors. It was difficult to deal with--my dad was only in his 50s and we didn’t understand how they could misdiagnose him. I was touched that my co-worker, Emily, would run for a charity that could someday save my dad’s life. We talked a lot about her training and the race. She just kept telling me that I could run a marathon, that I could do it. Skip to five years later and I didn’t run a full marathon but I did do a half, and Team Fox and Emily helped to inspire me. I chose to run for my Dad. He fights so hard every day. His PD has progressed rather rapidly and is really starting to affect his memory. He retired in 2008, so he spends most his time riding his tri-cycle, taking PD dance classes and working on his model trains.  He is an inspiration as well.  I decided to run since he can’t and if I can raise money while doing it to fight for him I will. I will run every day if I need to, to help the Foundation find a cure for PD—and I think that someday I might like to run a marathon for Team Fox.