NORAH DOOLEY: It's the night before the marathon, and I am terrified.

Why was I even running a marathon anyway?

I mean, who would do such a crazy thing?

JENNY HOFFMAN: I had been running for 2,862 miles, and I needed to pee.

(laughter) MEL MANN: I'm in Anchorage, Alaska.

I'm at the 19 mile of a 26.2-mile marathon and I still have seven more miles to go.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ DOOLEY: My name is Norah Dooley and I live in Royalston, Mass., now, which is a little tiny town in central Mass.

And I'm a educator, a storyteller, a children's book writer.

I'm a climate activist, a union steward, and a mother of four.

Could you please give us a little insight into how you got into all of this?

I wanted to take a theater class and I was finishing up a master's degree in education.

They didn't have a theater class, they said take storytelling.

And I said, "What, what is it?"

They said "No, you're gonna like it."

I said, "I so doubt that."

And I went to take the storytelling class at Lesley University and it was like, I was gobsmacked.

I was-- whoa, that's storytelling?

Are you kidding?

I've been doing that all my... that, this thing, that I... it was amazing.

Just curious, you know, what keeps you coming back?

What is exciting to you about storytelling that, you know, you've given so much of your life to it, to helping others, to telling your own, and, you know, what is that attraction?

Every time I tell a story, even about my own life, I learn something.

Every time I listen to a story, I learn something about what it is to be human, what that means.

And stories, for me, are beautiful lens on that.

And they move me, um, emotionally, too.

♪ ♪ So the leader of this little maverick band of unregistered runners who had just completed the marathon was also my art professor, and he was the director of this gallery that we had started-- a group of students and artists, this gallery and independent art school.

And he said, you know, the women... women cannot run the marathon.

All they would do is try.

They wouldn't finish, and they would cry.

Now we women in that group, we had been the pit crew, we had been the support group.

We had been the "shut up and just make the coffee" team for this group of runners, and now we were listening to our leader give a rationale for why that was our position.

So I and three other women in that group, we decided we were going to run the marathon.

We were very unlikely marathon runners.

I was the least athletic of them all.

I had to take developmental gym when I was in junior high school.

I had to wear orthopedic shoes from the time I was ten until I was 15.

I had a leg length discrepancy that made me trip and fall all the time.

But we decided we were going to do it and we were going to do it.

So we started with two miles, and this first two miles, I mean we couldn't even finish running two miles at one go.

I mean we had to walk and run and walk and run.

It was miserable.

And then four miles, eight miles and finally, in the middle of the winter, it's a 13-mile run, that's half a marathon.

But just at the time that you need to ramp up your training for the marathon, if you're training for the Boston Marathon in Boston, Boston weather ramps up winter and it's miserable.

I mean you run in slush, you run with your face being pelted by shards of icy-- just like glass.

You're just... it's sometimes so cold that your nostrils are filled with icicles.

But we got, we got through that and we were now two weeks before the marathon and our leader told us that if we thought we were going to do this, we would need to go to the finish line and run all the way to the bottom of Heartbreak Hill to the Newton firehouse, turn around and come back, do an 18-mile run.

And we did it, we did it.

So now it's the night before the marathon, and I am terrified.

So why was I even running a marathon anyway?

I mean, who would do such a crazy thing?

Oh yeah, I remember, because I said I would do it.

And why did I say I was doing it?

Well, part of it was because I needed to raise the bar on my own accountability.

My mother always said about me that, you know, hey some people live in B.C.

and some people live in A.D., but you live in E.C., the era of the extenuating circumstance.

"Norah, there's always some reason, "some glib little reason why you didn't, couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't do the thing that you said you would."

And she was right.

And that's why I was running the marathon.

I had promised my friends, but I was tossing and turning and we lived right in Boston, so you could hear all these church bells like 3:00, and now it's 4:00, and I just, I can't get to sleep.

How can you run a marathon without sleeping?

I've never done this before.

And besides which, P.S., not only am I not an athlete, but what about this?

You know, we only ran 18 miles.

I am, I am not a math person, either, but I know that 18 and 26.2 are not the same thing.

In fact, there's a whole third of a marathon in there that's missing.

So I've never run this far.

What if I get hurt?

I mean, anything could happen.

And then, the next thing I hear is my alarm.

7:30, time to get up, make pancakes for the entire team-- four women, six men, we're running the marathon.

We eat our pancakes and we get into all these station wagons to drive out to Hopkinton.

Now, the women all went in the same station wagon.

There's lots of camaraderie and hilarity and then, you know, it's like 20 minutes of driving and then 30 minutes of driving and everybody gets really pretty quiet and we're all kind of sitting with our own feelings.

And then, finally, you get to Hopkinton, and that just breaks the spell because there's so much adrenaline there-- you're breathing it in.

You're practically inhaling it.

It's everybody running around and talking.

Nobody cares that we have, like, our bibs are handmade and they have zero for our registered number, because back in the day, unregistered runners were like a minor annoyance.

I mean, they're like pigeons or orange peels, or paper cups on the course.

Nobody worries about it.

And then the race starts.

I mean, it's so amazing.

The gun goes off, there's this roar of voices and you see this, like, a snake of confetti going down the undulating hills of Hopkinton, like it's just amazing.

And you're just standing in place waiting for your turn to start moving.

And when you finally start moving, it's just mile after mile of people congratulating you and giving you encouragement, and cheering you on.

And then you're halfway through and you know you only have halfway to go.

But the most amazing thing happens is that you hit Wellesley College, and as a woman, it was fantastic because there's this, this energy tunnel there where the women of Wellesley College line both sides of the street, and when they saw women who only from 1972 had been able to run, why, they just went crazy.

And it was like we were lifted and pushed right out of that energy tunnel to the bottom of the Heartbreak Hill.

And let me tell you, that was tough.

Two of the women who started with us, they made it, but that really set them back a little, but Polly and I, we just put our heads down and went up to the top.

At Boston College, people start yelling at you, "It's downhill all the way," which is inaccurate, it's not, it's actually, there's some hills, but people are still lining the course, giving you encouragement and cheering you on.

And then when you turn that corner and you look down Boylston Street, that little tiny hill, and you can see that finish line, Polly and I grabbed each other's hands and we put our arms up like this and we sailed down that hill and crossed that finish line.

Well, you know, my art professor was right.

We did try, and I did cry, but we finished, and those tears, they were tears of joy.

♪ ♪ HOFFMAN: My name is Jenny Hoffman and I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I am a lucky mom of three great kids.

I'm a physics teacher, and I like to run.

Excellent.

And I, I wanted to know, you know, what sort of inspired you to first get into the world of physics?

My mom was a physics teacher and she was able to bring some demonstrations home and I've always loved solving puzzles and quantitative questions that have a right answer and a wrong answer.

Um, it's just fun problem-solving.

And I understand that you have your own lab at Harvard, the Hoffman Lab-- no big deal.

(chuckles): I wanted to know, what do you do there?

You know, for us laypeople, what goes on there?

And tell us a little bit about that.

I am really lucky to have the chance to work with some great students.

I lead a research group, and we build microscopes that look at what electrons are doing in materials.

So we're trying to understand, you know, how these materials are going to work in your electronic devices, how the electrons get from point A to point B, and we're going to image them with our microscopes and see what's going on.

HAZARD: Wow.

And how does storytelling sort of inform your approach to education and teaching?

I mean, we are always trying to tell a story about our science.

If you discover something and you can't communicate it to the world, then there's not much point in having discovered it.

Um, and I'm used to telling stories more in writing.

So this is a new forum for me, to tell an oral story.

Um, but we're always, when we try to communicate our science, trying to think about, what is the story that's going to explain to the audience exactly what's going on in the material?

I had been running for a very long time.

In fact, I had been running for 2,862 miles, and I needed to pee.

(laughter) I put one foot in front of the other and looked around.

Where was I?

Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania?

And sized up my options.

How did I even get here?

I've always been driven to tackle the biggest, hardest, highest, longest thing in front of me.

And after years of dreaming, planning, and training, I was two days away from a goal that had grown to permeate my entire imagination.

I was running across the United States of America.

I had left San Francisco 45 days ago, and I was on world-record pace to arrive in New York City.

But I had an immediate and urgent problem, and after over six weeks of running through rural America, I found myself in a small city with no convenient cornfields to hide in.

(laughter) So I needed a real toilet.

So I looked around, and I spotted a convenient pizza joint that looked auspicious.

I hoisted my tired legs up the big concrete step to the front door, and I asked the cashier to borrow the bathroom.

But she was not impressed with the smear of sunscreen and salt and bugs on my face, nor my pleaded CliffNotes version of my journey so far.

And after a long, wasted minute of hemming and hawing, she turned me away.

And in my frustration and fatigue, I forgot the big steps I had just climbed, I pivoted into free space, and I crashed hard onto both knees on the concrete sidewalk far below.

And I thought to myself, is this how it's going to end, really, after so many days of relentless running on this road?

Just as it ended four years ago, on my last trans-U.S.A. run attempt, crying on a sidewalk with a wrecked knee?

And a flood of memories flashed through my mind.

When I first bought a one-way ticket to California four years prior, I had underestimated the challenge.

I started in San Francisco, naively running down the eucalyptus-lined boulevards on day one.

But by day two, I was already overwhelmed as I slogged through California's hot Central Valley and through the thin air of Yosemite's high mountain passes.

I had suffered excruciating shin splints on Nevada's rumble-stripped highways and sunburn through my clothes in its treeless deserts.

I shivered through Utah's chilly canyons in the pre-dawn hours, and dodged an endless parade of cement trucks on its shoulderless highways in the hot afternoons.

I was stalked by a mountain lion, I battled 50-mile-per-hour headwinds through most of Colorado, and I entered Nebraska in a fog so thick, I couldn't see ten feet in front of my face.

And as I finally crossed the Mississippi River, I had tears of homesickness streaming down my face after so many lonely days of solo running.

And then, with less than a week to go, I took a wrong step in Eastern Ohio, my right knee buckled under me, and suddenly, just like that, my run had been over.

Through the long drive of shame home, and the months spent recovering from surgery and learning how to walk again, that cross-country run played on a repeat loop in my brain.

And every time I was rolling down any road, my eyes were on the shoulder, thinking, how could I place my feet?

So, when I finally earned another sabbatical, last fall, despite the vivid, hard memories of my previous attempt, I couldn't shake the dream.

I bought another one-way ticket to California and set out to try again.

But this time, I had more social support.

A sisterhood of six amazing human beings tag-teamed to help me through all of the emotional highs and lows and physical challenges of the journey.

My faithful crew chief, Jill, befriended families and businesses along the way, and as we traversed that same 20-mile stretch dodging cement trucks in Utah, she charmed the workers at Ash Grove Cement, and they gave us free Wi-Fi and breakfast burritos, and even a reflective vest that kept me safe the rest of the way across the country.

And although I was terrified to put myself out there after such a devastating failure four years prior, I posted my daily reflections on social media, and a growing response showed me the collective energy behind me, pushing me forward through every grueling hour of every exhausting day.

And one friendly couple sent me an encouraging word of the day for every letter of the alphabet: amazing, believe, courageous.

And when they got to day 27, they started over with foods.

We had... (laughter) Chocolate cake, deviled eggs, eclairs.

It forced Jill to be creative in the tiny RV kitchen.

And just over the last three rainy days in Pennsylvania, as I had stood forlorn and lost and damp on a hilltop, a friendly gentleman had invited me into his warm home and pointed me in the right direction.

And a student brought me Mister Rogers' favorite burnt almond doughnuts from Pittsburgh.

A local pilot flew his small plane over my head, snapping aerial photographs, and my daughter's friends sent crayon signs urging, "Run, Jenny, run."

So there, on that sidewalk, outside that pizza joint, with swollen knees and bloodied hands, I found another gear.

I might have peed in my pants.

(laughter) But I picked myself up and continued stiffly towards my goal.

And as I crossed that penultimate state of New Jersey, I finally understood something of the character Gollum, operating with a single thought, a single destination, a single craving dominating my mind.

New York City Hall, my precious.

(laughter) And suddenly, in the dark, there were lights flashing and horns blaring, and a police escort arranged by a friend surrounded me and accompanied me to the George Washington Bridge, where a small crowd awaited and flowed with me across the bridge into Manhattan.

And as our pack streamed down those last 12 miles, we picked up followers like the Pied Piper, strangers and friends from all epochs of my life, from kindergarten to high school, from childhood summer camps to college crew team, to former and current students and science collaborators, and even my own children.

And when I finally arrived and touched the steps of New York City Hall, more than a week under the world-record pace... (audience murmurs) ...fulfilling a lifelong dream, I thought, every human being deserves one magical moment like this, surrounded by so much love.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) HAZARD: What did you learn from the experience of running coast to coast?

I learned that America is a big country and we can have a warped view as we live on the coasts.

The whole center of the country is cornfields, it's people working hard to feed us on the coastal cities.

And I learned that wherever I went, Americans are really friendly.

You know, red states, blue states, whatever their yard signs, every single American that I met was generous and kind and wonderful.

And so I wish everybody had the experience of crossing America on foot and meeting all of the Americans that make up this great country.

♪ ♪ MANN: My name is Mel Mann, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.

I retired from the military, and some of my hobbies are like chess, bridge, reading, running, dancing to James Brown.

I am a leukemia survivor, and I like talking to other cancer patients and telling them about my story.

I understand that you have quite a large social media following, if I understand correctly, about half a million followers on Twitter.

How has social media impacted your communication efforts?

It's made it easier for others to communicate with each other.

When I first started, there was only one guy on the street who had a computer, and I had to go down and have him teach me how to use it.

Now it's like immediate, people can get information.

They can talk to other patients.

What role has personal storytelling had in your, you know, your efforts for patient advocacy?

People can look at me and they can say, "Well, you know, he's exhibit A, and he survived this long, "and he did these things, and he took this chance.

And perhaps I may also."

♪ ♪ It's June 1999.

I'm here in Anchorage, Alaska.

I'm at the 19 mile of a 26.2-mile marathon, and I still have seven more miles to go.

I didn't sleep well last night, knowing that I had to get up this morning and run a marathon.

And also, it stays light here 22 hours a day.

As I'm running, I'm remembering four years ago to January 1995.

That's when I was a major in the United States Army, stationed in Michigan.

And that's when my days became dark, 24 hours a day.

I went by the doctor's office to get the results of some medical tests that I had taken before the Christmas holidays.

The doctor, he gets the test, and he starts reading the results to himself.

And I can see his expression change.

And I feel that something is not right.

He looks at me, he says, "You have leukemia.

The prognosis is three years to live."

As he's telling me this, I'm thinking about my five-year-old daughter, Patrice.

Santa Claus brought her a beautiful little pink bike for Christmas, and my wife Cecilia and I are teaching her how to ride the bike.

It still has one training wheel on it.

The doctor continues.

He says, "The only cure is a bone marrow transplant."

"Because you are Black, "you only have a one percent chance if someone in your family does not match you."

Last year, over 2,000 Blacks needed a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

Only 20 of them found a match-- one percent.

I asked the doctor, "Will diet and exercise help?"

He says, "No."

I ask him, "Well, can I still work out?"

He says, "Yes, but don't run any marathons."

(audience laughs) You know, it's a nice, cool day here in Alaska.

Even though I'm now at mile 22, the pace seems easy.

After my diagnosis, things went downhill.

No one in my family match, no one on the registry match.

So I contact the bone marrow donor registry, and I say, "I want to conduct a bone marrow donor drive."

They said, "No one "has ever found their own bone marrow donor.

"It's better for you to let us do that, "and for you to focus on your health and getting well."

Well, that response only motivates me to do bone marrow drives.

So...

I do drives at churches, I do drives on military bases, and I do drives at malls everywhere, nationwide.

Friends do drives in Germany.

They do drives in Hawaii, even the Pentagon.

I have 350 coworkers who stick out their arms, and they donate a sample.

My daughter, at our tenth drive, she looks up at me and she says, "Daddy, "I can't see why we can't find a bone marrow donor for you.

All the blood looks the same to me."

She even sticks out her arm for medical science, and she gives a blood sample, and she doesn't even cry when that needle enters her skinny vein.

Mile 23, just a 5K to go.

18 months after my diagnosis, my aunt puts on our 25th bone marrow drive, and this white businessman comes to the drive and he says that he went out to Texas and he tried a clinical trial that saved his life.

That shocks me because no one has even mentioned clinical trials to me.

And I am just angry that I have been excluded from the front lines of medical research.

I call this doctor and I fly all the way out to Texas.

That doctor looks at my record and says, "We still have time.

"I'm going to put you on clinical trial after clinical trial."

At the three-year mark, I'm in a worse condition than I, than I started.

No medicine is working.

I go to sleep for eight hours.

I wake up, feel like I never went to sleep.

I've lost weight.

So I asked the doctor, "Are there any more drugs?"

He says, "We have one drug that is close, "but we're still having problems in the lab in animals.

"And if we ever get approval, you would be the first person to use that drug."

His nurse says, "Well, you just told somebody else the same thing."

(audience laughter) I'm at mile 26.

I can see the finish line.

So six months after I came home, the doctor called and said, "Hey, we got approval to use that drug in humans."

And I fly all the way back out to Texas and I take the medication and it works.

(cheers and applause) And now, ten months after taking that first dose, I'm here in Alaska, running a 26.2-mile marathon.

(applause) I can see the finish line.

I've raised a lot of money for blood cancer research.

I did it, I've got my earphones in, I'm listening to Prince's "Party Like It's 1999."

(audience laughter) I ran that marathon four years after being diagnosed with terminal leukemia.

Now I stand here 28 years later, after a terminal leukemia diagnosis, and I just want to say, running a marathon is a lot like life.

You have to keep believing, you have to keep moving, and you have to keep hoping.

(applause) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪