They strode purposefully along Modoc Road early one Saturday morning -- men and women of all ages, shapes and sizes, spreading out individually and in clusters according to their speed.

They were members of the Team in Training on a weekly run that would last two or three hours.

They call the program "TNT," and it is indeed a powerful force.

Seventy runners and walkers from Santa Barbara's Team in Training will do the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in San Diego on Sunday. For the privilege of working out under supervision during the past four months, they raised over $200,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Some of them are survivors of blood cancers. Teresa Martinez, a recent college graduate, learned she had chronic leukemia last year. She is the local TNT's honored teammate this weekend. Sustained by a chemotherapy drug that was developed in a lab funded by TNT dollars, she will take on the 26.2-mile challenge.

Some volunteer runners have relatives or friends stricken by cancer. Others joined because of the opportunity to improve their fitness in a structured program. They each had to raise at least $2,400 in donations to participate.

Here are the stories of three local runners -- Kristen Zimmerman, Mike Lovette and Carri Svoboda.

+THE DANCER: Kristen Zimmerman not only signed herself up for the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon training, she recruited seven of her sisters in UCSB's Delta Gamma sorority. So much for Friday night parties.

"We had to be up for our most important runs at 7 a.m. Saturday," she said. "You put the ear plugs in and go to sleep early."

Curt Zimmerman provided the inspiration for his daughter. During the winter break in her freshman year -- she's now a junior -- he was diagnosed with chronic leukemia.

"It was a shock," Kristen said. "He's always been so active."

He still is. He is a member of a Bay Area TNT program geared toward hikes in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

Last fall, Kristen went scuba diving with her father and a young cancer patient he met in the hospital. They were submerged in cages off the Farrallon Islands and observed great white sharks. Not your ordinary family outing.

Kristen, 21, was a high school dancer and cheerleader in Danville. Sunday's marathon will be her second -- she did the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco as a sophomore -- and there will be lots of friends and sorority sisters cheering her on.

+THE SURVIVOR: Mike Lovette had his neck measured for a dress shirt early in 2005 and was surprised when the tape said 18 inches.

"I figured it was a swollen lymph node," he said. "I had it checked out, and they found large cancerous masses in my chest." He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

For the next six months, he underwent chemotherapy in Boston. He had wanted to lose weight, but not in that debilitating way.

"I did football and track in high school, but I got to college and let myself go," said the Northeastern University graduate. "I lived upstairs from a bar my friend owned and developed a pot-belly. When I got sick, I had to stop and catch my breath to make it up three floors."

On June 29, 2005, a month before he reached the end of his chemo treatment, Lovette's older brother James died of thyroid cancer. James had survived two heart transplants as a child, and the cancer took him out quickly.

Mike decided to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He chose the program at UCSB, the farthest school from his woes on the East Coast.

"I drove out here two months after my brother passed away," he said.

With his cancer in remission, Lovette's weight topped 200 pounds again. He was in a local pizza parlor one day when a flier caught his eye. "I saw 'Leukemia & Lymphoma Society' printed on it," he said. "It was about the Team in Training. I went to a meeting last January and decided to try the marathon. I wanted to give back to the people who helped me."

The 6-footer is now a healthy 180 pounds and hopes to run the Rock 'n' Roll in around four hours. He is going to dedicate the 22nd mile to the memory of James.

"I think my body can handle it," said the 25-year-old grad student. "I'm sure my body can handle it, after all the training I've been through. I have more anxiety when I see the oncologist every six months. So far, the news is good."

+THE BLOGGER: Carri Svoboda, 37, found out that she could run earlier this year during a Team in Training workout.

"I was surprised," she said. "I always told myself I couldn't run. I was going to walk the marathon."

Her expectations were limited because, she said, "I never did anything athletic in my life."

The junior high teacher did a lot of charitable things, and one of them was a query into a breast cancer fund-raiser. That got her in the database to receive a mailing from TNT.

An avid compiler of quotes, Svoboda remembered one from Eleanor Roosevelt: "Do one thing each day that scares you."

She signed up for the marathon, and now she expects to run the whole thing: "I'm running 26 miles Sunday in San Diego. It's crazy."

Svoboda relishes her new athletic life. She enjoys a sense of comradeship with her teammates, even while she's alone in her thoughts during a run. She said it has helped her become more patient in the classroom with restless students at Santa Barbara Christian School.

It also helps that she stands 6-foot-2.

"I didn't enjoy being tall as a child," she said. "Now I love it. Fortunately, we spend most of our lives as adults."

The TNT experience has been very positive, Svoboda said.

"The people who join are other-centered," she explained. "That changes the dynamics of the team. There's no elitism, nobody saying, 'Get out of my way,' if you're taking your time. It allows the sub-8-minute milers to cheer the people who are walking 17-minute miles."

Because of her enthusiasm, her sense of discovery and her eloquence -- she was an English major at UCSB -- Svoboda was encouraged to write an on-line blog about her experience with TNT. It can be found at http://wherescarri.com.

"So, where's Carri?" she writes in a recent entry.

"She is in the midst of some kind of major transformation of self," Svoboda said. "When I got into all of this, I thought it would be more a transformation of body, but it really has become something much more important and elemental than that.

"As Thoreau points out," she said, "it is not what lies behind or before that matters. It is what lies within."