A Look Back at February 27, 2011

My thoughts were heavy. The LA Marathon was less than a month away and it wasn’t terribly long ago where I was anticipating running through my new home-town. But, with the impending words “you have a mass on your brain,” followed by the surgeon’s warning, “you will either have the dexterity of a one-year-old or you can be doing 10% of what you were doing 3 weeks after surgery,” I knew the LA Marathon would have to wait.

I’ve been back at work for about a month. Prior to returning, I was doing the Jeff Galloway run walk for about 3 miles every day. I have yet to work a full 8-hour day and run in same day. The depth of frustration was great since working and running has been my normal for a few years now.  (It actually had become such a large part of my life that the nurses and doctors in the ICU were impressed with my strength, referred to me as an athlete, and my neurosurgeon said that my previous training would help me recover faster once he saw me post-surgery.) I still didn’t consider my athlete- sports has always been something I’ve struggled with, but apparently the paradigm shift I had taken in the last couple years put me into this untreded category.

My neck was tender- it was necessary for the doctors to slice into it to drill a hole in my skull to remove the tumor. It was difficult to sit up on my own, and I needed to be propped up by pillows. When I was first able to start running (Jeff Galloway style) with my sister and then my non-running parents, normal first started returning. It really felt like it was returning when I was strong enough run with my running group- Waking up early on Saturday and have my pre-run breakfast of wheat bread and peanut butter.  It was a difficult 5 miles, and half the distance of what I had become accustomed to when I wasn’t training for a race, but it was 5 miles and despite the level of difficulty, it felt good to get a long run in.  My running friends stayed by my side for part of the run, but they had other races on the horizon and I didn’t want them to neglect their training so after words of encouragement, we settled into our normal running paces.

I have made some of my best friends through this running club. We found each other through meetup.comWe don’t necessarily go at the same pace, but it’s great to have a friendly face out on the trails cheering you on. When we’re not running, we share training and nutrition tips- when time permits, we even get to have a meal together.