Today was my very favorite run called I’m Trying. I wrote about it last year because it was my first 5k ever. Take a moment to read the story of how the road race came to be and who it honors. My reason for trying is, of course, my mother who has been battling cancer for three years now.
Cancer is cruel. It has no conscience. My mother, Carrie, is a health nut who never misses a checkup and won’t even eat a piece of fruit if it isn’t organic. She isn’t exactly in the common candidate for Colon Cancer, yet she was diagnosed with Stage IV Colon Cancer in March, 2011. Again, cancer doesn’t follow rules and it doesn’t care who you are.
I was always athletic, even as a child starting, I suppose, with softball. Add to that tennis, years of basketball camp, and volleyball. I even scored a small tennis scholarship to a school I decided not to attend. I spent my high school years training, lifting weights, and running suicides when not actually playing in competitive games. If you played sports in high school, the word suicide likely just made you cringe. I always hated distance running. At the start of each new season and sport, we’d always start with distance running and oh how I dreaded that. When I was 25, I began running. I wanted to stay in shape, train for a long-distance bike ride, and I was broke. Running is free. Near my apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts, there was this great running location called The Emerald Necklace. I didn’t have a routine. I’d run there in the afternoon or even–eek–at night (oh the things I’d go back and tell my 25 year old self). I was in the best shape of my …
our backyard farm 