Tedy Bruschi Prepares For First Boston Marathon

BOSTON (CBS) - There's a first time runner in this year's Boston Marathon that football fans will surely recognize. Former Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi will run with the team he formed after suffering a stroke.

"I'm running the Boston Marathon with my wife Heidi, that's a sentence I thought I'd never say," Bruschi says laughing.

The Bruschis will make the grueling run to raise awareness and research money to combat stroke, something Tedy learned about all too well in 2005.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Karen Twomey reports

"I was thirty-one years old when I was having my stroke, and I had my stroke and I didn't know I was having a stroke," he says.

By starting "Tedy's Team", he hopes to do something about that. The group of marathoners has raised over two-million dollars over the past seven years, but Bruschi was never with them on the starting line.

Tedy says, "I always told my runners who asked me if I was gonna run, I only train for eight second bursts you know, but that was when I was playing football and I don't play football any more and I didn't have any more excuses."

The Bruschi's had the benefit of a mild winter for training but it's still a big commitment.

"It's like getting ready for a football season," he explains. "There are times when you just don't want to train, you have to push yourself and that's what my wife and I did."

He'll have his work cut out for him, as Boston is one of the toughest of marathon courses.

He says, "What will keep me going is all the past runners of Tedy's Team that have inspired me."

The only prediction Tedy would make is that he would finish the race.