Michael Canino was never much of a runner.
However, in April, he announced that he will participate in the New York City Marathon on November 5 to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association in honor of his late grandmother, Elaine Canino.

She died on December 30, 2017, at the age of 79, while Michael Canino was a sophomore in college.

“She was fantastic,” said Canino, a Highland native, now living in Hoboken, NJ, while working as a physical therapist in New York City. “A truly loving grandmother, incredibly intelligent. From what I understand, they would always tell me about her years at IBM, which is where she and my grandfather (James) worked back in the 1980s and 90s. She was absolutely a remarkable person.”

James and Elaine Canino spent a lot of Michael’s childhood in Tom’s River, N.J., and he would see them both there and in their native Highland. But it was during his years in high school and college that the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, which includes memory loss and behavioral changes among other debilitating symptoms, began.

Canino didn’t understand the magnitude of the disease and progression until he got into his graduate work at Marist College.

During the last years of his grandmother’s life, and after her death, Michael Canino and his father Glenn had participated in the Hudson Valley Alzheimer’s Association Walk and did some work with the Alzheimer’s Association when he was in Physical Therapy School at Marist College.

Looking for a way to back the cause, and after discovering Hoboken’s running culture, he sought a way to get involved.

That’s where running the NYC Marathon came in.

“I thought it would be a good way to build on that and keep supporting the cause, while also pushing myself because I was never a runner,” Canino said. “I think it’d be a good thing to get behind the regimented programs. I hadn’t really done anything that regimented since baseball.”

He got his spot on Team Alzheimer’s Association, which has more than 100 runners. Canino made his initial post saying that he was running the Marathon to support Alzheimer’s on April 10, and set a fundraising goal of $4,200. Within two weeks, $1,300 had been donated.

He reached his goal of $4,200 on September 15, and as of Saturday, he raised $4,381.

“I’m very happy with that,” Canino said. “But as a team, we’ve raised over $547,000 with the goal being $600,000. That’s pretty darn good as a team. We’re getting there.”

He started his training with low-intensity running and biking to get in better aerobic shape, bumping up his mileage until he started the regimented 18-week training program in July, provided by the Alzheimer’s Association.

Two weeks ago, he ran his longest distance 20 miles, which was his last long run before Sunday’s marathon. The event starts on the Staten Island side of the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge, and goes into Brooklyn, and into Queens. From there, it crosses the Queensboro Bridge and into Manhattan. It proceeds north up First Avenue in Manhattan before going north into the Bronx, looping back around into Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and proceeding to a finish in Central Park.

“I’m really looking forward to the camaraderie that comes with it and the atmosphere as you go through each borough,” Canino said. “Supposedly it’s the biggest party in the city, and you get a ton of support. That’ll be very exciting, considering I do all my runs essentially on my own in the quiet. It’ll be a nice change of atmosphere.”