Me? Speed?

Speed. I don’t have it. I want it. Somewhere in the midst of my distance running I lost my desire for going faster. Training for a marathon changes the perspective of a runner. Well, it did for me anyway. No longer did I think about how fast I was running my normal 4 mile loop, but where I was in relation to my long run that week. Everything became justifiable to the long run.

“Oh, I have to take it easy today because this is my first run after my long run this weekend.”


“I can’t push it too hard today because I have my 18 miler in a couple days and I need to go the distance”.

“I think I need to figure out what my “easy pace” is…nope, don’t have a clue what that is, so I’ll just take it nice and slow so I can run good this weekend”.


Somewhere along the line I realized I stopped believing in my ability to have both. I excused myself right smack into the middle of slug-dom. And each marathon I ran left a big slimey trail of self disrespect. If you would have happened to be behind me that day, September 13, 2009, you would have found a marathon course peppered with my words of “I can’t do this”, “This weather has sucked the life right out of me”, “oh well, another lack-luster marathon” spewing from my mind.


The negative self-talk and blatant disrespect for myself and the training I had put in had to stop but what was it going to take?

Two weeks after that horrible marathon where I ended up walking more than I had ever wanted to, I found myself standing on the start line of another race. My sister had signed up for her very first half marathon and to support her through this tremendous decision, I too had signed up for the race. I expected a sense of dread after my horrible marathon just two weeks previous. What I didn’t expect was my excitement to be toeing a starting line again. At the prospect of having to run 13.1 miles instead of 26.2 miles gave me an incredible let’s-just-have-fun-with-this attitude. For the first time in a year and a half I was excited to run a race.


The excitement showed up in my pace. I had run the fastest I’d run in a long, long time. When I crossed the finish line in under 2 hours I was ecstatic. Though my final time of 1:59:58 was nowhere near my personal best of 1:52:43, it was the strongest race I’d run in almost 2 years. And the difference was my attitude.


The winter had proven to be a mild one allowing me to run through the darkest and coldest months. My weekend runs were 10 to 12 miles long consistently. In the spring I signed up to run a local 15k. As this distance was shorter than the long runs I was currently turning out, I felt a great sense of ease going into this race. Imagine my complete surprise when I crossed the finish line as 3rd in my age group! What??? ME??!?!?


An amazing thing happened after that, the negative self talk began to quiet. The results of some hard strong running I’d done was beginning to show. For the first time in my adult life I realized I wasn’t just a runner. No, I was becoming more than that. With my simple, yellow, cheesy “third in age group” ribbon, (which hangs proudly on my wall by the way), I felt like – could it be?- an athlete.


So here I sit a few weeks later and one of the newest members of a local running group. We are an eclectic bunch of people from all backgrounds of life. No matter what happens during the day, when we get together we are all runners in running shoes striving for one thing – to get faster. Some of us have the speed required to qualify for the Boston Marathon and other have the speed to break a sub-4 hour marathon. The current speed we each come to training runs with really doesn’t matter. We all recognize and respect the blood, sweat and tears we each are pouring into our training and that transcends pace.


Week one of training is behind us. Tomorrow we will leave our jobs to come together at the track of the college in town. We will laugh, we will run, we will train. And together we will become faster.

Three Weeks

Three weeks. Where will you be in three weeks? What are your plans? The future you are planning? Three weeks. It’s all they gave her. Raylene will spend the next three weeks planning her own funeral.


If given the same news, what would I do? Hug a little tighter? Kiss a little longer? Laugh harder? Does one spend the last few weeks cherishing the memories made or regret the dreams never lived? Do the tears flow in sadness or in celebration of the life given? When time is short does patience get longer? Does wonder and amazement grow or does the world become small and confining? Is there hope in the hopeless?

Three weeks. What does one do when given the news you fought for years not to receive? The fight was hard and you fought with all your might and then some more. Strength came from an unexplainable place. Determination coupled with sheer will paved the road of perseverance and yet it wasn’t enough. After climbing the Mountain of Impossibility you reach the top only to discover it is in fact, impossible. The finish line is close and clearly seen. There is victory in the fight, but not in the battle. The battle is over and you stand defeated.

But not hopeless. Raylene is a believer and will soon be able to ask Jesus the question she must’ve asked herself a 1,000 times – why. Sometimes I sure it was out of anger, at times –despair, and still other times in awe, but the question was always the same. Why. And He will tell her. For reasons we can not fathom, He will tell her how her fight was used to show other’s Hope.

Three weeks. No more springs, no more summers, no more falls. There will be no more camping trips, summer vacations or family reunions. There is only today. It is all any of us are ever given. Today. That is all she has. That is all I have. Today.


The room around me buzzes with young family chatter. My boys play and laugh and fight. Three weeks. Today. How much I take things for granted. How many times today have I forgotten to acknowledge the moment I am in? Or worse, wished for it to be over. What did I do, or how did I enjoy the day I was given today?


Three weeks. Today. Celebrate the life given. Today.

The Battle

Cancer has been a part of my entire adult life. Not as one battling the giant, but as one who must stand on the sidelines and witness the struggle. I hate it. Always known as someone who gets things done, my usual method of operation is to jump in with both feet and take charge. Not this time. I can’t. It’s not my fight.


My dad was first diagnosed when I was in my early 20s. It was my first taste of witnessing mortality in my parents. Seeing my big strong Daddy lying in a hospital bed shattered the illusion of immortality and rudely delivered me to the reality of my father being human. Dad’s fight was tough but he emerged on the other side of the battle strong and cancer free.


Then it went after my mom. Always the fighter, always the rock, always the strongest, she entered into a literal battle for her life. Ovarian cancer is ugly and it is an extremely evil villain to fight. Often unseen in its earliest most treatable stages, it shows its cowardly self only when the fight will become the toughest to win. I was 29 when Mom began her fight.


The phone rang last week delivering me the news I never wanted to hear. It was my Mom, the warrior, telling me the new chemotherapy stopped working. I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw things, I wanted to take the anger inside and turn it into a fuel that would help my mom with her fight. I don’t remember most of the remaining of the conversation we had, I just remember how it felt. Helpless. The beginning of the end seems to have knocked on our door.

My Type A personality renders completely useless in this situation. I am a doer, not a bystander. The sidelines are not a place I am use to standing, but yet, here I stand. I stand in support of the fight I witness. I stand in awe of the courage I see. I stand in quiet for the strength she shows.


Onward my mom fights, and I continue to stand.