I think I’ve said this sentence about one thousand times over the past few months.  First when I came home from a PR in Paris and strained my hamstring during a six mile run a week later.  Stretching, cryotherapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, spinning, walking.  Through it all I kept saying, “I’d feel so much better if I could just go for a run.”

Six weeks later I got the cancer diagnosis.  I went and ran two miles as fast as I could that day.  My chiropractor asked me how my hamstring felt.  “I don’t know,” I said.  “I was running so everything would be numb.”

(Today was the Dallas marathon – I had planned to run the half, but I spectated instead.  I don’t know who these people are, but see how happy they are to run?)

I do have a positive attitude about treatment, but I’m scared, too.  And I’ve cried a lot.  In my car.  In the shower.  At random inconvenient moments.  And a lot of times when I first wake up in the morning and snuggle up with my husband.  And inevitably I tell him, “I just want to go for a run.”

The day of my CT scan and MRI, I had lunch with my running friend Chrissie.  I told her, “I would feel so much better if I could go run eight miles.”  “Why eight?” she said.  I didn’t really know, I told her.

But I do know, I think.  It’s not just about running.  It’s about getting back to who I was before.  This summer I was the healthiest and happiest I’ve been in a long time — maybe ever — and those long run Fridays, up before dawn and out to the Katy Trail for 8 or 10 or 12 miles, those are the days I miss.  That’s what I want back.

I just want to go for a run.  A few weeks ago they feared that the cancer had spread to my bones, and I faced the possibility that I might never run again.  Luckily, it hadn’t.  But still, there’s a long road ahead of me. Tomorrow morning I’m having a bilateral mastectomy.  After that I will have radiation, and probably chemotherapy, and honestly no one can tell me how this is going to go.  I guess in that way it’s kind of like a marathon after all.  All I can do is line up at the start and take it one mile at a time.

I’m taking these three unnecessary things with me to the hospital tomorrow.The Goofy medal to remind me that I can do things that I think are impossible.  The Paris half medal to remind me of happy things in the world like Paris, and Disney, and friends.  And Danerys because she is most definitely a member of #teambadass.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog, if anything.  For now I just plan to use it to get some of these things out of my head.  It may not be much of a running blog for a while, but it will be.  And I will be a runner again.  Soon.