2012 Race recap

2012 started off pretty well. In January I completed the 54 story stairclimb for the Leukemia Society for the third year in a row. I actually talked 5 guys from work into it and they all completed the climb in full firefighting gear.

There were quite a few other fire departments in attendance this year from the surrounding area and I spoke to one guy who came from Virginia.

In March we did the Rock and Roll half marathons in New Orleans and Dallas. That was a little tough on me, I was not really in shape to do two halfs three weeks apart. New Orleans was a great venue. I stayed in a hotel a block from the start line. The weather was excellent, cool in the morning and warmed up nicely by the end. The wind was pretty brutal and the long slow slog up Esplanade to the finish at the fairgrounds was not to my tight IT band's liking.

The course starts off Downtown on Poydras, heads over to the Garden District past Tulane and turns around at Audubon park. The course runs on either side of the St Charles street car tracks then past the World War II museum, across Canal st and into the French Quarter. I was sorely tempted to suspend my run and sit and have a beignet at Cafe du Mode, but the Sunday line to get in was too long. The route continues down Decatur and onto the dreaded Esplanade to the Fairgrounds by way of St Louis cemetery #3 (I think)

After the finish line, the food, drinks and entertainment are on the nice grassy park. Unlike Dallas and San Antonio which end in stadium parking lots. The best part was the air conditioned motor coaches that ferry the runners back to the start line downtown.

Three weeks later it was the Dallas Rock and Roll. I've done this one three times now, so the specifics are the day are a little fuzzy. I can't remember if this year was the cold and rainy year or it was last year. I do know that my finish time was slow and my IT band was killing me by the finish.

The spring came and I renewed my friendship with Jenn Sommermann on the triathlon circuit. First on the list was the Route 66 triathlon in El Reno OK. I came in a day early and checked in to the hotel and picked Jenn up at the airport that evening. This was my first Olympic distance race and I was nervous about the swim distance. Swimming 1500 meters in the pool with lots of turns and a wall to push off of is one thing, but this would be my first open water swim at this distance and my first wetsuit swim.

The swim was a two lap affair and I started out with my age group and in 5 minutes got caught by the fast swimmers in the ladies division who started after me. I soldiered on and had a 45 minute swim leg. I was not the last out of the water in my division, so I have that and it was my first Olympic OWS.

They had wetsuit strippers so my transition time wasn't bad and I was off on the bike leg. It was also my first race on my newly acquired (2nd hand) Zipp tubulars. Let me tell you, the RD ran a great race, but the course on old Route 66 was pretty rough. The course was a two loop 40K, the did have a bottle hand up at the end of the first loop. About half way into the second loop I hit the most bone rattling pot hole of my bike riding career.

I made it to the top of the hill and realized that I had blown my front tire. As I slowed down to stop and change it, I heard the most sickening sound that the owner of a set of carbon fiber wheels can hear. The distinct sound of crunching carbon fibers. Ok, maybe carbon wheels and a bumpy pothole filled course was not the best idea for a Clydesdale racer. I got off and pulled the wheel, stripped off the tubular and inspected the rim and knew I was done for the day. No need to bother putting on the spare. After a while, the neutral support/sag wagon came by. He had tubes and a pump and a few tools, but no wheels to lend. Dejected, I loaded up and was driven back to transition. I carried my bike to the rack and one of the race officials said, "go ahead and do the run if you want" so I took off on the run. Given my 45 minute swim, I wasn't going to get any age group awards. I figured that the time I spent standing at the side of the road cursing was about equal to the time it would have taken me to finish the second lap, so my finish time was pretty close to what it would have been.

For a first Olympic distance 3:47 is nothing to write home about. Yeah, i know it sucks. I think my age group's winner came in at about 2:30 or something ridiculous  like that, but I'll take it.

Next posting: My second Olympic and boy was it hot.

Some background

Life turned upside down

 My wife Michele and I married in June of 2006. My wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about three days before Thanksgiving 2007.

How it began

 She had been having intermittent back pain for about a year. Some nights she even slept on the floor because the mattress was too soft for her. I kept trying to get her to go to a back specialist, but she told me she had been told before that she had a degenerated disk and she didn't think there was anything that could be done.

In November she finally couldn't take it anymore and made an appointment to see a back specialist. The Dr. ordered an MRI and they gave my wife a copy of the views on a CD. She called me at work to tell me about the MRI and sent me a screen shot telling me that there were big holes in her vertebra. Well, there weren't any holes, she was looking at an "interior slice" and was mistaking her bone marrow for structural flaws.

After I got home that night I  looked at the entire MRI and the computer. I made a comment that it looked like her bladder was really full and asked her if she needed to pee during the MRI. She said no and I dropped it. Not suspecting a tumor or anything like that, I didn't think any further about that large object I saw.

The Call 

The next day, she called me at work and said the radiologist called and said she needed to go see her OB/Gyn right away. At the time, my wife had a GP and not an OB, so I looked on the website for our insurance company and gave her the names of a couple of OBs near the house. She made an appointment and called me a couple of hours later. She was in a panic, she was lost and couldn't find the Drs office and was really worried the radiologist was so vague about what she had seen. I got on the internet again and gave her the name and phone number for a different OB/GYN that was she could find that was actually in the same building where she had the initial MRI.

Dr. Small was able to see her right away, talked to the radiologist, got the MRI and made an initial diagnosis. Stage III ovarian cancer. Dr. Small trained at UT Southwestern in Dallas and called one of his former teachers, Dr. Lipschitz a gynecologist/oncologist and made the referral. Her initial CA 125was somewhere around 2000. CA 125 is a cancer tumor marker for ovarian cancer, but not a diagnostic test for the presence or absence of cancer. Though a normal number is somewhere around 30 or less.

With Thanksgiving approaching, there was some doubt as to whether or not a surgery team could be assembled until after the holiday. Drs Small and Lipshitz got it arranged and the surgery was done on Tuesday. The tumor was removed, it was about the size of a large eggplant. (After i wrote that, i realized the irony in my choice of example and I decided to leave it in because it is a good visual for the size) Happy Thanksgiving. My coworkers were very supportive, I spent part of Thanksgiving morning at the fire station, got to have some turkey and pie, before heading to the hospital. Michele came home on Friday.

 The long road to treatment and recovery begins.

Thank goodness for decent healthcare insurance and an understanding employer. Michele began chemotherapy shortly thereafter. Using the good graces of my employer and the family medical leave act FMLA, I was able to flex my time and take time off to drive her to chemo, sit with her during and drive back home. Due to the advanced stage of the cancer, her chemo was very aggressive. Six rounds of Cisplaten and taxol through a central line. After that was done she had six more rounds through intra-peritoneal lavage. So in addition to the central line in her chest, she also had to have an intra-abdominal medport surgically installed.

The lavage required an overnight stay in the hospital about every 4 weeks and made her sick as a dog. This chemo required the nurse to dump about 1000 cc of saline into Michele's abdomen to expand it, then they pumped in another 1000 cc with the chemo added to it. 2000 cc of extra fluid pumped into your abdomen cannot feel good, then top it with a highly toxic cancer drug. I don't know how she did it.

Chemo, diet and fatigue

After a life-changing event like this, you make a lot of changes. When your partner makes a lot of changes, you kinda get swept along. In Pulp Fiction Jules says, "My girlfriend is a vegetarian, that kinda makes me a vegetarian too." How true. Michele was always a pretty active person, but chemo took it out of her. Getting up and moving around was a chore, much less trying to exercise, but she soldiered on. She became a juicer, grinding all manner of vegetables and fruits together, always wanting me to taste whatever the hell it was. Err, no thanks, I just ate. She started on wheatgrass and once a week I would drive across town to buy two flats of wheatgrass for her. She wanted to do her wheatgrass first thing when she got up in the morning, but she read that squeezed wheatgrass needs to sit for two hours for its best potency. (or something like that)

The end result was that every morning when I got up, I would get out the hand cranked expeller and grind out a couple of wheatgrass shots for her before I left for work.

On the mend

The 5 year survival rate for Stage III ovarian cancer is about 10%,  Some women die from the cancer itself and some find the chemo itself so physically devastating that they cannot complete the treatment. Michele spends a great deal of time on the internet reading about cancer and cancer treatments. (Sometimes too much time I think) Supplements to take, vitamins to avoid, vitamins to take in combinations with other vitamins, supplements to avoid if taking vitamins. All the while making friends on the internet, sharing treatments, BUT frequently hearing that they are dying or have died. They talk about living with cancer. How about living with knowing that you have a 1 in 9 chance of not living 5 more years even with the best treatment you can find.

This Thanksgiving makes 5 years

She's not out of the woods yet, but this is a milestone she never thought she would make it to.

I have a blog?

I've got a blog? Since when? Oh yeah, I set this page up and 4 years ago and never posted a single thing. Boy have I got a lot of catching up to to do. Where to begin? I had knee surgery in 2008 and dusted off my old bicycle for rehab and rode and rode and rode. The next thing I know, I'm signing up to climb the stairs of a 54 story building for charity in January of 2009. Props to the Luekemia Society of North Texas for putting on the event. Did I mention that I did the whole thing in my full firefighter gear and carrying an airpack?

How do you follow that? You sign up for a half marathon when you've never even run a 5k. Go big or go home! Rock and Roll Half marathon followed by the Big D Half barely 3 weeks later. Suddenly I'm completely hooked on seeing what my limits are. That summer I rode the bike leg of a Sprint triathlon relay, our team taking first place.

That's the crew from work, first and second place teams in the relay, plus three individual racers. In September, I did the Susan Komen Race for the Cure 5 K, my first 5 K that wasn't part of a half marathon, again in full firefighting gear. Just over an hour. Note to self, next time wear running shoes instead of fire boots.

2010 brought some old challenges and some new ones. Big D stair climb for the Luekemia Society a second time, Rock and Roll Dallas, Rock and Roll San Antonio and an attempt at Criterium racing. (Ugly, very ugly) and I begin thinking seriously about triathlons. I was a swimmer and cyclist in high school and college, but running has never been my thing. I can handle the half marathon distance. For me its a slow steady grind to the finish. Sprint triathlon runs are shorter and the expectation is to run the shorter distances fast. Not my strong suit.

Ok, so there is the preamble. More on this triathlon stuff later.