Dear Body, You’re Doing Okay

I am a marathoner. I had been a marathoner. I was marathon training. Being a runner had and has been such a big part of my identity since 2014.

I remember sobbing at the 2019 Twin Cities Marathon because my husband told me it was time to start trying to have kids and I just didn’t know how long it would be until I crossed another major finish line. Not just that, but it took 5:59:00 to finish, the longest, personal worst marathon.

As we tried to get pregnant afterwards, I felt the anxiety and stress of what that meant, but I kept running. Even after getting a positive test, I still left the house for 7 mile runs. Until my heart rate got too crazy, and I had to stop. Then I would dream about running. Huge, round belly, dreaming of my next ten mile run.

My twins were born 34 weeks, 6 weeks early. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks, staring down the finish line zone for Twin Cities Marathon and all I could think is, I have to get back there. So I started training early and often. I signed up for the 2021 Twin Cities Marathon and was determined.

Three days before my first half marathon postpartum, I found it. The lump. I googled obsessively over what it could mean- anything BUT cancer. But when I got the call that it WAS cancer… I felt like I couldn’t move. I felt like I never wanted to run. To hide under a blanket.

All the words pushed me out the door. “You are so strong.” “You are so brave.” “You are an inspiration.” I absolutely did not feel like these things. I felt like a young mother who just wanted to live and watch her daughters grow up.

So I ran. I trained. It was an escape at 4 am when the steroids made sleep impossible. It was a victory march at 7 am when I finished a 10 mile run before my kids were awake. It was a finish line 8 weeks into chemo shouting that Cancer could get bent. I was not giving up. I was going to run a marathon and neither the cancer nor the chemo were going to slow me down. I PRed my 20 mile run after finishing my taxol regiment and as I braced for the “red devil”, my delulu told me I was three weeks away from running a marathon.

Except… it was dose dense AC and I was sitting in the hospital 7 days later with a pulmonary embolism. On marathon morning, I ate ice cream for breakfast and sat in utter defeat over this body- she betrayed me so many times in the last year and I worked so damn hard. So. Damn. Hard.

I did make it to the race course to cheer and watching people push their body to their limits brought me to tears. I sat down that night, not a single hair on my head, my steroid round face, utter, bone fatigue and I signed up for the 2022 marathon. Cancer could get lost.

Even though I got the call that I was NED December 6th, 2021, I felt so lost: I was not this person in the mirror. I no longer had breasts. I was tired all the time. But I thought I could still run. I could do it. That first run after my double mastectomy, I made it half a mile before I stopped and just sobbed. My body did it. We made it to the otherside. We were going to be okay. Sure, with trust issues and anxiety. But we could keep running. I was still a runner.

Dear Body,
I am proud of you. You have healed. You have gotten stronger. You are not the same. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, you have evolved. We continue to do long miles. Each mile feels like a victory with you. I cannot believe we make it 26.2 miles every time we have- the 7 times we have run a marathon or more since becoming cancer free.

We did it. We freaking did it. You are okay. We are okay. We’ll be okay.

Thank you body – for not giving up.