Today's Workout: 061010

Chris

I know everyone was out to run their personal best time last week. I was out to also achieve a personal best of my own but it had nothing to do with time. It was all about “just” finishing and I was pleasantly surprised to discover I was capable of more than what I thought…..I’ve included a note below at what Friday meant to me.

***

When I got home, after last Friday’s race/walk (June 4), I cried. Hard. It wasn’t because of disappointment at finishing last, it was joy at finishing at all. And accomplishing an expected goal.

Last August I was told that, without surgery, I had two-and-a-half months left to live, tops. I had a massive tumour (early stage cancer) that was slowly suffocating me, impacting my cardiac system and making daily living a challenge. The tumour would kill me before the cancer would. Don’t ask me about the pain. Just over two weeks later, I had major surgery in Toronto: removal of my thyroid, some of lymph nodes on the left side of my neck, relocating my trachea (back to where it was supposed to be) plus removing a large tumour that had grown from mid-throat to mid-chest. Post surgery I looked like Franken-Cindy but, today, it is blending in and smooth. (Sometimes, if I catch someone looking at it, I tell them it is a scar from juggling chainsaws – not so successfully! kidding)

Fast forward nine months and, there I was, last Friday, after midnight, in the dark on a 5 km run/walk…long behind the pack but feeling equally as pumped. The reason I participated was because I’d started getting active the previous month and I asked Chris if I could tag along with the herd to further challenge myself. And it would be a personal celebratory power walk in response to my recent appt in Toronto where I’d been given the ‘all clear’ (read: cured) diagnosis at Princess Margaret’s Head and Neck Clinic. 

The momentum of the runners, ahead of me, spurned me on. I can’t explain the joy I felt to be pushing myself that hard. How wonderful it was to breathe hard and know it was because it was physically challenging vs. being challenged physically. It was the first true cardio test for my relocated trachea (and it did great!).

By the time I neared the second lap, it became apparent I’d be doing that lap solo as everyone else was heading back to the gym. I have to give a shout out to the female runner who saw me walking-as-fast-as-I-possibly could, on Friday, and called out to me, “Why don’t you try running on the gravel?”  I have to clarify that it has been a long time since I’ve run (5 km event 18 years ago). Fact is, I didn’t even run when I participated in Crossfit two years ago (opted for rowing). So I started to run.  But I wasn’t truly alone. I’d brought two friends along with me in my shoes. The left shoe has a piece of paper that read Mary Jane and the right foot’s paper said Carla. Mary Jane was in the same room as me, in Toronto, and we’ve kept in touch through our recovery process. Hers has been a tough climb. Carla is a long time friend, who lives in Toronto, who has been battling breast cancer. She’s a fighter, a role model and gives a ‘kick ass’ reality check about what it means to fight cancer. With those two women ‘on board’, well, I couldn’t let them down and not finish. I was now running for ‘us.’

During one long solo stretch, I wondered, “What the hell am I doing here, running by myself, in a dark area, where bears frequent at this time of night?” And then I remembered that I was here for me, to give myself a physical test-run, to push my limits…to show I was alive and well. And when I got into the gym and saw “49:18: on the clock, it was like someone showed me the winning lottery numbers.

When you support the Relay for Life team, remember that there are ‘happy endings’ out there, too. I’m one of them except now I think of mine as a ‘happy beginnings’ story. I’m just getting started…..

Cindy Ellen Crawford

(member of the second group of Crossfit participants from 2008 and hopefully back at it soon)