Last weekend I ran the Hood to Coast. When
I was just starting up with treatment last year, my brother Jim texted me a picture of his
team at the finish line which I received while sitting in chemo.
Having done the Hood to Coast before, I knew how grueling it was, yet sitting
in that lounger, I wanted nothing more than to be able to run that race again.
I told Jim I was in for 2012—one of those comments you typically make after a few beers,
but in my case, after a bag or two of Gemzar and Carboplatin. Somehow, Jim convinced
his teammates that I could pull this off-and they invited me to join their
team.
We had such an amazing time this weekend—my team was
unbelievably kind, supportive, fun, not to mention all incredible and inspiring runners. For
those of you unfamiliar with the Hood to Coast, it is a 199-mile relay race, run
by a team of 12 divided into two vans. Our team, We’re Kind of a Big Deal, ran
the h*** out of that race—finishing in 29 hours and change, and about 45
minutes faster than we expected to. Our van spent a lot of time together-between Jim’s non-stop laughing, the peanut
butter pretzels and the Jungle Brothers, the 29 hours just flew by.
In my third leg—a 6-mile stretch at about 7am on Saturday, I
kept telling myself to take the leg one painful step at time, and just to keep moving. My calves were fried from my first leg—a straight shot down from Mt. Hood—and
it was pretty painful to stand, much less run. But, I remembered where I was
sitting a year ago and somehow each step kept coming.
When I got home, after unpacking and telling my family the crazy stories from the weekend, I was missing my running buddies and went to iTunes to find the Jungle Brothers tune that kept firing us up the whole weekend. It is called Breathe Don’t Stop. A more aptly named song cannot exist for the weekend—or for the past year.
Here are some pics—the before, the after, and the beer on
the beach!
