I Got a Present

At last Saturday's GTS I received a present from TNT. I tied for best fundraising website, and was given some TNT swag as a reward. This is my third time winning best website. The first time I was given a little key pouch that attaches to my shoelaces; the second time I got a TNT water bottle; and this time I got a TNT bag and a cap. Oh yeah, I'm cool.  ;-)

 
This is the site in question:  http://bit.ly/RebeccaTNT2014

The Mission Moment

Every Saturday morning at our TNT Group Training Session (GTS), someone stands up in front of the group to tell us their TNT story and remind us of what we are training for. This week it was my turn. Here is the story I told.

My story begins with my friend Emru’s diagnosis of Acute Myelogenous Leukaemia. When Emru was diagnosed, he was told that what could save his life was a stem cell transplant. He also discovered that, not only was there no compatible donor in his family, but he would be unlikely to find an unrelated donor because of his ethnic group. You see, the Stem Cell Registry is a predominantly caucasian list,​​ and Emru was of mixed caribbean descent. Rather than admit defeat, however, Emru and his family took on a mission. They started a campaign to get people to join the Stem Cell Registry, especially those from underrepresented ethnic groups. It just so happens that Emru and his sister Tamu had a vast network of connections that they were able to put to good use.  They had posters, pins and pamphlets made. Emru gave interviews, kept a blog describing his treatment and search for a donor, filmed a talk from his hospital bed, and addressed audiences before concerts. His sister organized information sessions at Concordia to dispel myths about stem cell donation, with guest speakers who described their experiences.

Emru ​finally found a match about nine months after his diagnosis, but was unable to get into remission before the transplant and passed away in just over a month. His family’s mission did not end there. They have continued to help recruit potential stem cell donors and to raise money for research. In 2010 they got a large group of family and friends together to participate in Montreal’s Light the Night walk to raise money for the Leukemia ​& Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC). I was among those people, and it was my great honour to hold one end of the banner, which read “Help Emru Heal Someone.” The experience was very moving. It left me feeling like I needed to do more.  

A short while later, I saw a message on Tamu’s Facebook from Light the Night, saying something like “come to a Team in Training information session at the LLSC office.” I read the description of TNT and thought: “I’ve run 10Ks and a half-marathon before... this is something I can do!” So I went to the information session where I met some crazy cancer fighting people and signed up to train for the Halifax Bluenose Half-Marathon in May of 2011. After Halifax, I trained for the Nike Women’s Half-Marathon in 2011 and 2012,​ and am now training for my first full marathon—all with Team in Training. I have raised a total of $11,276 for the LLSC.

TNT ​participants run (or walk, or swim, bike and run) in honour of someone who has lost, won or is currently fighting a battle with cancer. The longer one remains in TNT, the more people tell you their cancer stories. In my first season, I had one honouree. Then one of my donors told me of her daughter’s diagnosis, and in my 2nd season I had two honourees. Then an old family friend passed away and I had three honourees. This season it looks as though my list will grow to five, which does not include the team’s honourees. Our team have a few children whom we run for, who are still in treatment, and who have received care-packages from the LLSC office. We train hard and remind ourselves constantly that our aches and pains are nothing compared to the harsh treatments cancer patients must endure. ​

Should you wish to help ​us with ​our mission, you may do so here: http://bit.ly/RebeccaTNT2014. Every little bit helps​ and can make a tangible difference in someone's life​.

What keeps me coming back to Team in Training

I’m finally back in the swing of things and have a routine that seems to be working for me. Lucky for me, I’m not training alone. The best thing about TNT is the team. Since I went back to the running team four weeks ago, I have consistently been the slowest of the full marathon group. I share “back of the pack” status with a couple of the new halfers, but when they turn back and the rest of us keep going, I become the only slow poke in the pack. So does that mean I run half the route by myself?  Hell no! There is always someone with me, whether it be a fellow alumni/TNT mentor or a coach. This Saturday, three people took turns running with me. Each of them asked me how my training was going, and helped me fight my negative self-talk.

And what do you suppose happened when I finally arrived at the centre with my coach? We were greeted by cheers and high-fives from our teammates, who were on the lawn stretching/resting/talking. On the way to the locker room, I was reminded of my progress by another alumna. She and I were on the walk team together, and at a GTS on May 3rd, she had planned to add a few run intervals, so I ran them with her. She reminded me on Saturday that I had been unsure at the time whether or not I’d be able to run/walk the whole event—let alone run it. I can always rely on my teammates for a dose of perspective.

I think the main thing that keeps me coming back to TNT is the feeling of belonging to a team. We are a team who were brought together by the way cancer has affected our lives. We share a need to push ourselves to achieve goals that require us to test the limits of our physical abilities. We also help each other find creative ways of raising funds to fight our common foe. We share our stories, our fears, our motivations, our hopes, and our trade secrets. When I run the marathon in September, there will be people in purple cheering me on, and people in green helping me through the difficult bits.

When I ran the half two years ago, three coaches helped me out: Brian calmed me down and gave me a banana when I felt like I was dying; JS accompanied me up Berri Street (the hill near the end); and Cathlyn took me the rest of the way to the corral before the finish line.

Fun with images

In case you missed my innumerable posts about Team in Training on Facebook, I made a bunch of handy visual aids to express how I feel about TNT and to draw attention to my fundraising campaign.  Here are a few examples for your entertainment.

Heroes of the Week

I’ve also made a series of images about my “Heroes of the Week”. Every time I receive a donation from an individual, I stencil their name on a ribbon, which I wear on the following Saturday morning to my group training session (GTS) with Team in Training. I also take a picture of the shirt and post it on Facebook. Here are a few images I made on the subject.

Should you care to join me in this adventure, there are still a few places left for the Montreal Marathon, as well as a few other choice events. Just contact the TNT office at 1-855-331-5318 or visit their website.

It’s official, I’m a runner once more!

In my last post, I mentioned that I was doing 5/5 run/walk intervals.  I have since graduated to 10/1 intervals, which is what I did when I trained for the half-marathons I did with Team in Training.  I am, in fact, in my fourth week of training with he run team.  You can follow my training on my RunKeeper page (registration required), should you so please.

If you do take a gander at my RunKeeper page, one thing you might notice is that I’ve got some catching up to do compared to the level I was at in 2012.  To give you an idea of what I mean, here are two versions of  my “Personal Records” summary from RunKeeper, one that covers 2011 to 2014 and another that covers the last three months.

Take a look at my best average pace.  Consider that the month of May of this year is when I was still doing run/walk intervals of 5 min/5 min without any hill training.  The average pace for this morning’s run was 8:30 min/km.  Is it my cardio that still hasn’t bounced back?  Is it the beta-blocker I’m taking to prevent migraines that’s making me slower?  Is it the heat?  All of the above?  All I know for sure is that I’ll keep hammering away at the pavement and see what I can achieve by race day.  

I’m back, Baby!

For about a week and a half now, I‘ve been running home doing 5/5 intervals (5 min walking/5 min running, repeat).  Last week, I ran/walked home twice with a walking day in between, and this week I’m going to try walk/running three times.  So far, I feel great.  The run intervals are challenging, but they don’t feel destructive.  I get home feeling zen, rather than destroyed, the way I thought I would feel.  I also thought my pace would be much slower, but it’s pretty close to what it was before I quit in 2012.  By the time the marathon rolls around, I definitely won’t be in the same corral as the fastest runners I know, but I won’t be in the last one either :).  Right now, I feel like a 5 hour marathon is an easily attainable goal, one that I might very well surpass. 

What was my motivation?

As I mentioned last time, I’ve been leading the TNT walk team this season for a small group training for the San Diego Half Marathon on the 1st of June.  A week after my last post, at the next GTS,  there were only two of us in attendance.  The other walker is actually (for medical reasons) a walker in the winter and a run/walker in the summer.  As we were leaving, she let me know that she would be doing run/walk intervals that day, as prescribed by her doctor.  So, since there we no other walkers, and since I was planning on integrating run/walk intervals into my training anyway, I decided to run with her.  Our goal, according to our training schedule, was to walk from the NDG Sports Complex to the Lachine canal and back, and her personal goal was nine 5/1 intervals (5 min running/1 min walking).  So we started with the intervals, which basically got us half the distance, and then we walked back.  And how did it feel?  It felt great!  We even got some cheers and thumbs up when some TNT runners spotted us running along the canal  :)

Should you care to inject a little jet fuel into my training, you could visit my TNT fundraising page.  Any donation, however small, helps us fight the good fight and kick cancer’s ass!

What has been, what is and what will be happening

When last I posted on this here piece of blogitude, I was having health problems that led to me take a break from running.  The "tumour" my neurologist had seen on my first MRI turned out to be a disc bulging out one side of my neck, and not a tumour at all.  I did, however, have to forgo training for a new reason.  After trying multiple daily medications to prevent migraines, which all left me foggy-brained and unable to do my PhD work, I had no choice but to try a drug that would affect my ability to train.  The result is that my migraines have decreased in frequency and intensity, which is the most important thing to me right now.  It is the only reason I am now able to function like a normal person.  Like most migraine medication, my new drug is actually intended to treat a different ailment and just happens to work on migraines.  This drug is for hypertension, and so it affects my blood pressure and my heart rate.  This makes training rather difficult.  In fact, the doctor told me I would no longer be able to run half-marathons.

And so a year went by with no TNT for me, which made me sad.  I followed my friends' progress of Facebook and wished I could be with them.  And then I remembered that there was a way I could be a part of Team in Training without running.  There is also a walking team.  So I went to see Corinne at the Team in Training office downtown and told her I wanted to join the walking team.  As it turned out, she had been searching for someone to lead the walking team, as the usual walk coaches were taking a much needed break.  Soooooooo, I became a sort of assistant coach for the walkers, as well as a mentor for participants (who turned out not to need much mentoring at all).  

Training with the walkers has shown me that I can actually train for speed over long distances.  In fact, last week I walked 8.65 km at an average pace of 8:33 min/km, which is faster than the average pace of my last half-marathon, which I ran.  So what does this mean?  Does it mean that my doctor was wrong, or does this just mean walking is a better choice for me?  This is what I intend to find out.  I have just registered to do the Montreal Marathon with Team in Training, but I don't yet know if I will walk, walk/run or run.  Apparently, if I choose to walk, I will have to do the half rather than the full.  Some TNT friends were telling me today that the Montreal marathon is not walk friendly.  They put all the walkers in the last corral, sweep the race course early and don't offer an early start (like some other races do).  I'm going to start by training walk/run and see how it goes.  I would really like to do the full marathon, so I hope it will work out.  

Stay tuned...

The Current State of Affairs

As those who pay attention to my Facebook page are aware, my migraines have become more frequent over the past year.  This led to several doctors trying several medications on me until I finally saw a neurologist. He sent me to have an MRI in November, which revealed that my brain was fine, but found something in my neck.  This is the way it was described to me by my doctor: vertebrae in my cervical spine are pinching a nerve, causing it to bulge and that bulge has developed into a benign tumour.  I had to have another MRI with higher resolution and contrast agent to see what's going on with the soft tissue surrounding the tumour and pinching of the nerve.  I will have the results of this last MRI on May 7th.

When I found out about the pinched nerve in my neck, I decided to take a break from running until I have a clearer picture of what's going on or the problem is fixed.  From what I've read, high impact exercise and pinched nerves do not go well together.  

But what about the fundraising?

Running may be best avoided at the moment, but I can still walk.  I have therefore decided to join Light the Night, which is a walk organized by the same group responsible for Team in Training, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada.  The family of my friend and honouree, Emru Townsend, already participate in Light the Night every year, so I won't have trouble finding friends to walk with.  

So if supporting blood cancer research is something that you enjoy doing, please visit my Light the Night page and help me reach my fundraising goal.

Thank you very much for your support and encouragement.