Two Fridays ago, I unlocked a post-surgery milestone — I walked a 5k loop I’ve run many times before. I was surprised that I didn’t feel left out because I couldn’t join the evening runners who were out on the same route. Rather, I was enjoying the movement and that I wasn’t thinking about the effort. For a moment I could pretend that I’m not still waiting on my pathology results and my first post-op follow up appointment with my surgeon.
Read moreTag: Running with cancer
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Tapering? For surgery?
I was a little surprised when my phone showed that it was the hospital calling on Tuesday afternoon. My pre-surgery screening was already scheduled for Thursday, so maybe it was to move my appointment time? No, it was to confirm that my surgery will happen on Thursday, 8 February. Short taper.
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A new take on a training block.
Before I was diagnosed, my last in-person race was a 10k in May. It was my ‘home race’ where I usually ran the half, but this time I had picked the shorter distance. In my head, I was on the cusp of breaking up with longer distances — my entry into the Chicago marathon had gotten waylaid by the pandemic and looking at turning 60 felt like a good time to reframe why I was racing.
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So … how this started.
It will no doubt seem odd to a lot of people that one of the first things I started thinking about after my diagnosis was what would this mean for my running habit? If you’ve followed my Instagram, especially my running journal, it won’t surprise you at all. My current running habit dates from turning 50, and in the decade since I’ve accumulated a collection of finisher’s medals from various distances and been a member of a running team for half that time.