Running for Life

I haven't NOT posted in this long  since I started blogging several years ago. And yes. That was a double negative. And no. I won't apologize. For better or worse.

I haven't posted mainly because Paul, my husband, life partner, best friend, soul mate, whatever you want to call him, had a heart attack at age 47. Two weeks later, he had triple bypass surgery. One week after this, he's at home, recovering like the maniacal runner he is. Running is saving and has saved his life. We're convinced.
 
Let's put it to you this way.

If you're reading this, you might know that I have a kind of love hate relationship with training. I started this particular blog because I wanted to focus the writing and training on a triathlon I'd signed up for last January. Well, it turned out that the race itself (last June) was a bit of a bust: the bike rental got screwed up and I couldn't do the bike part. I was devastated in the moment, but got over it pretty quickly. I was on holidays. I was in Bali and I was with Paul. Not all bad, of course.

Ten days after I returned from this vacation, Paul wasn't feeling well. In fact, he was feeling so poorly, we cancelled doing the 20k Jazz Tune Up race here in Toronto. This is bad news as we've both run races in less than winning conditions, finishing last in at least one of the races we did together. BUT, being the unqualified nonphysicians we are, we figured that he had some sort of infection, maybe even pleurisy, but only in a worst case scenario. Walking pneumonia...something like that...whatever that is.  A few days later, Paul went to the doctor, who prescribed him some antacids and offhandedly gave him a proper referral to another doctor, saying "You might want to get a stress test or something."

Paul acted on the referral. Jesus.

Turns out that he'd had a heart attack within the previous 7-10 days and didn't know it. He was sent straight from that appointment late one Friday afternoon to the Emergency Room at Toronto Eastern Hospital. He was then moved to St. Michael's Hospital. Within two weeks,  he would have the  bypass procedure, not totally uncommon for someone his age, but pretty surprising to everyone we encountered. First question to him: Do you smoke cigarettes. We saw all kinds of people in the ER and later in the ward and post op who struggle with this addiction. As a former smoker, I understand their predicament. Thankfully, Paul has never smoked. He inherited his heart disease. For the record, the care was excellent and had we been in the U.S. we figure we'd owe about $200,000 for the hospitalization, emergency care, incidentals and oh yeah, the surgery itself. We'd probably have to declare bankruptcy because we don't actually own anything worth even a fraction of this that we could sell to pay a medical bill like that.

Anyway. This is a person who ran his first full marathon on a stress fracture and collapsed about 50 feet from the finish line. Didn't know the pain in his leg was being caused by this. Didn't know that what he thought was sweat was actually the marrow seeping out of his bone subcutaneously. I've heard the story a thousand times, and mercifully, fortunately and miraculously I will get to hear it a thousand more times, mixed in with the "I had a heart attack and didn't know it" story too.

Running Stories

 It is easier to read about running than it is to actually run, isn't it? It is certainly much easier to run if you are avoiding swimming.

Getting to the point of any kind of committed training involves a series of decisions. Lately, I've been saying to Paul that his training mainly consists of the races themselves as there is not too much going on for him in the way of hitting the pavement in between these organized events.  And, of all people, he should know better as he BROKE HIS LEG and collapsed 50 feet from the finish line of his first marathon about ten years ago.

When Paul talks about running, I know what he's saying. It's symbolic and literal with all that subcutaneous liquid seeping into or out of the bone marrow just before he fell. Guts or ego (or something else) prevented him from pulling out of the race sooner.

When Haruki Murakami talks about running, he's articulating drive, force and commitment. The ebb and flow. Something of that is in Paul's continued running. After two operations and "the boot", cane and limp and full recovery (more or less), he runs with a massive hockey stick shaped scar that goes from his knee to his ankle and enough screws to set off a metal detector. Paul also told me that he was so close to the finish line when he did collapse that he heard the announcer over the loudspeaker state that "There appears to be a woman down on the course." The emergency workers placed Paul's chipped shoe on the finish line so that he could complete the race and get a time.

In our three event, Bermuda Triangle Challenge, Paul placed 264th and I 265th out of 331 participants. Our total time for the one mile, 10K and Half-Marathon was under 4 hours. Just. But still -- we were very happy with the results, and I will be donating $50 to a charity -- send in suggestions.

Stay tuned for a mini interview with one of the organizers of Bermuda Race Weekend. 

Some cross-training in the works and I still haven't gone swimming yet.

Suit Tracking

After much fanfare and starting up anxiety, my bathing suit still hasn’t arrived. The exact details of who was supposed to ship what and when are not all that important, except to note that I’ve never seen such corporate finger pointing. This is the new retail, I guess, with clients who are online and at the mercy of invisible companies and shippers.  The insipidly obsequious and insincere customer service made me kind of sick. Anyway. As it turns out, on a bus to Montreal from Toronto I totally pulled some sort of muscle on my lower right side. I’ll look it up in an anatomy book, but it feels thoracic to me. Thoracic…sounds like indigestion. My husband, Paul, has always said that if you eavesdrop on conversations in any running event, you’d think you were in a hospital emergency room.

 

I will believe the suit when I see it and then I will open the package and attempt to squish myself into it. 

 

Gym-bound for some cycling and treadmill work.