After the night I told John I’d be on his Fred team – and can I just say that it was a Friday night when everything seems possible and we were having dinner out and I had a glass of wine and life was just a fully relaxing venture? After I said I’d be on the team, I told a couple people very unselfconsciously in John’s presence that I was considering joining the team. In a clear, firm voice that I was trying to ignore because I was talking, John made some remarks like, “You’re definitely on the team”, “We’re counting you in” and “You are on the list” which sounded presumptuous given that I was still thinking it through.
I mean… sure, I’m in… but, you know, like… that’s a long way off. Yes! I want to be on the team! But in a way that I don’t have to be on the team if that seems better for me at the time. You know?
What I said to John was that I’d be on the team and apparently that can be misinterpreted. So I have received a participant packet from West Michigan Trails and Greenways.
And I’m having that feeling that I have to do what I promised because otherwise I’ll be letting people down but – what if I can’t do it?
Now I have done this before and that presents some evidence that I can do it again. But. I only ran half a Fred the first year. I did run the whole thing the second year, but, see, they give me the short spurs. And, I did have some trouble – not sure I will tell that whole story. I mean, I finished and everything. But, not completely gracefully.
Then the year after that I got cancer. And yadda, yadda… radiation, surgery, chemotherapy. Several of the folks from my first two Fred groups had a team that year. I was told that some of them stopped on the trail and said a prayer for me. I was home adjusting to life with a temporary ileostomy at the time.
That’s gone now and so is the cancer (say I and also all the medical experts at this point). I’m doing pretty well – thank you (to who and what is out there, I know a lot of whos and I’m not sure what the what is but I think there is a what).
Still. I haven’t run since cancer. My last 5K was the Irish Jig in 2013. It’s 2016 now.
So you take someone who only ever ran short distances slow, and you put them through rectal cancer, and then give them a pretty (maybe unnecessarily) long rest afterwards, and then sign them up for a 200 mile relay.
Aahhh!! Crap! I can’t do it! I want to go home!
