Of Philosophers and Kings...

Things are always bigger than they appear.

Life is one of those things. At one moment you might think you've got it figured out, contained in a finite space, and it spills over and gets messy. It lives on, taking on a meaning and life of its own, and you might never find out how it got out and where it went.

I was busy experiencing the pure joy that found me on Sunday as I ran twenty one-mile loops around Grandview Cemetery for my long run. I started early in the morning and had the silence of the place to myself, just a sea of headstones quietly covered with snow.

I enjoy the loops because it is a form of meditation, a spiritual practice of sorts, allowing me to clear my head and make room for clearer thoughts that come in. I think the ability to do this type of running, that many people find monotonous, is great for a creative person. It's refreshing mindlessness that leads to just the opposite, mindfulness.

So many ideas come to me on these loop runs, and I let the thoughts flow in and out, and they usually come back at a later time and I write them down. Many of them are just clearer or different perspectives on ideas, events, or experiences.

I've missed this. Maybe that six-day adventure is still ahead of me. I don't know yet.

It's always interesting to see what people leave on their headstones, any way they wished to be remembered, or that their families chose to engrave in the granite.

When I'm in the cemetery I think about the stories and people that I knew. I remember patients. After all these years in Fort Collins there are quite a few. Around the perimeter of the cemetery it's a one mile loop and I count as many as half a dozen former patients. If I venture into the inner roads of the cemetery, there are many more.

I remember the stories and the details come back, what happened, how things did or did not go well until their end.

I think about the content in my book. If more people would think about what life and quality of life means to them, before they get sick, then maybe we would spend less energy making a mess of things and ruining the quality of the time we are here.

I do know that there's a sense of peace in there, among the symbols of the lives that happened, and have now passed, that is a reminder of reality and mortality, and it's a beautiful reminder. We don't have to feel entitled to eighty or more years on this planet. We can go gracefully and accept less if we live each moment fully and true to ourselves, our values and those we love.

That's all.

Evolution of a Runner and Thoughts on Life and Death

Monday was solstice and I made a commitment to myself to get moving. So far this week I have been successful. Lifting, doing my abs and core work, my hip strengthening exercises, and running and walking. My neighbor has helped, she's been off work after hand and wrist surgery so she can't do her usual yoga, and we decided to walk while she is unable to do her routine, which helps me get out the door.

It's been cold and I haven't been running a lot, I did an hour on Monday and a little over a half hour each on Tuesday and today. I will try for an hour of running tomorrow even though it's supposed to be super cold. But Christmas and any big holiday have always been my favorite times to run because traffic tends to be light, people tend to be in a decent mood, at least less likely to run you over. I'm sure that will all change on the 26th when the shopping frenzy resumes.

I was thinking a bit about how I've evolved as a runner. For me it has never been a straight line, I have gone back and forth with being competitive and non-competitive, being highly driven and laid back. I love to run and I am thinking about finding some fun adventures to do in the coming year, though they won't be about racing or being competitive. I am ready to explore some trails and places I've been wanting to go but my specialized training for roads and my ankle problems never allowed me to put much effort into it. I have some new running partners who are also on-foot adventurers, and one of them is as much a photo freak as I am, and I find myself looking forward to their company.

Tomorrow is Christmas. We are taking it easy, having one friend over and that's it. I made tortilla soup and I got some stuff for quesadillas, and baked some cookies. After two tries on the cookies I finally did it right. I don't know why but cooking in the kitchen has been disastrous this week, I attribute it to the lack of a kitchen supervisor watching me. Isabelle took over Iris's position, and she was getting good at it. But now it's just me. Cooking is not nearly as much fun without Buffaloes.

We got Isabelle's ashes back last night. Dennis cried as he walked in the house with her, having picked her ashes up on his way home from work. A little turquoise box. It's almost an affront to fourteen years of companionship. But that's the way they do it, and now we have them both back.

It's so strange to receive the remains of your dog, the whole, wiggly, soft, furry, loving, interacting, communicating, responsive creature, in the form of a little cheesy-looking box in baby turquoise blue with a little pawprint charm attached to it, with some fake flowers to top it off. Now Iris and Isabelle are both home for Christmas, sitting together on top of the dresser, next to the hedgehog and bone pillow they each loved.

I remember how Iris and Isabelle used to run and could go forever, running circles around us, covering ten times the distance we did. Then they gradually slowed down, going from running Dennis's pace to my pace, to slower than me, then just walking, and in Isabelle's case, barely walking, until she could only go places being pushed in the cart.

I miss my girls, but I wouldn't have wanted to prolong either of their lives beyond where they both ended. I wouldn't have subjected Iris to being reliant on medications to prevent her from having seizures until she got so bad that she herniated, and I wouldn't have wanted Bella to keep losing her balance, falling, not being able to get up without help, losing bowel and bladder control, and living with the pain in her joints.

I know I'll keep moving as long as I can. I just hope that by the time I am unable to move forward on my own feet, that I or someone will be able to help me end my life when I feel like there's no reason to live. I hope by then we have more progressive laws that allow for that to happen for humans.

Death is a part of life and we're all going to die someday so we might as well accept our mortality and live each day the best that we can. If more people would not avoid thinking about and discussing death, and learn to face it as a normal part of what happens in our lives, and deal with the reality of it, we would be so much better off.

We would live our lives better, take better care of ourselves and each other, spend so much less on medical interventions, and we would finally expand palliative care to be a major part of medicine and health care. Instead of treating people as diseases, we could treat them as people who need help either healing or being made more comfortable.

The days are getting longer, and that means more daylight to enjoy each day. Only one more week until spring. Full speed ahead!

Random Late Winter Thought Rants

Tomorrow at 4:03 pm it is solstice. I am so glad. I have decided to use it as my motivation to get my butt back in gear. I woke up this morning at 4:20, but fully able to breathe. I didn't wake up once with a coughing fit. First time in probably a week and a half.

Today is my dad's birthday, he's 73 and going strong. Some underlying health issues pop up to haunt him every so often, mostly just reminders when it's time to get that follow-up check, but he's been fortunate, and he does take good care of himself in general.

Life and death have been on my mind this week as I have been writing a bit about those topics and just read Atul Gawande's book Being Mortal. Good read, by the way. If people would accept death as a part of life and not fear it so damn much, they might take better care of themselves on this side of the grass. Then we might not have such crazy out of control health care costs. We won't even get started on the relationship of fear of death to religion. But I could get going on a soapbox on all of these...

A former patient and now friend passed away this past Wednesday after dealing with a type of cancer for several years. He was one of my favorites. He was a musician, and was always warm and friendly and had such good energy. I know he suffered a lot in private, all the years of treatment and the ups and downs from that were hard on him. I've come to know his wife well as we've spent many morning conversations stopped along the Power Trail while I was running and she was walking her dog. I had been thinking of them a couple of weeks ago and then I got sick, and then just found out he's gone. I am glad he no longer has to suffer a medical experiment, but it's really sad when people who are such gifts to humanity get removed from our presence prematurely.

My thoughts have not been on running so much, which is good, but I am starting to feel kind of stiff and rusty. My back has not 100% recovered from the massive sneeze attack from earlier this week. It's getting there though.

The donut run idea was received enthusiastically by a number of people in the running club, so it looks like my crazy idea might take off. We have to wait for Dunkin Donuts to open in Windsor, and that might not be until after my birthday. Maybe next year, but we'll see.

So what is it with the newest male fashion statement, the unkempt, long, thick scraggly beard? I'm sorry to any of my readers who have one, but I can't handle it. Maybe it's a reliving of childhood trauma when I lived back east and I used to see those Hasidic Jews in the cities, wearing those long beards and the crazy long sideburns, and their black hats. They always freaked me out as a small child.

But I think my beard aversion has more to do with the number of men I've observed dropping food in their beards and seemed to be unaware. I wonder how long things live in that rat's nest. And then when I see these guys who are runners and I think of all the sweat and gels and snot and all the other unsavory things that happen during an ultra...I just can't get past it.

"Lumbersexual" or Duck Dynasty, hipster fad or spare refrigerator, it's freaking me out and I'm already way over it. Can't we go back to something less obvious, like tattoos and nipple piercings? At least we get a break from looking at those in the winter.

Beards, beards, go away.
Store your food some other way.

This too shall pass. For now, my advice is, if you must, please Trim It.

And this concludes my sleep-deprived, pre-solstice rant. And yes, the title of this post says late winter. Spring starts January 1st.

Scary!

The other morning Dennis went out to get the paper and found this dude passed out in front of our garage.

Felix was out late, probably took SpongeBob drinking, and like the sponge that he is, he wandered off and found our house and passed out.

Felix claims he is glad that SpongeBob is no longer couch surfing at his house, so we're stuck with him for a while. Until he ends up back in Felix's custody. When he least expects it...

I feel really "off" today. Not sure if it's a delayed body hangover from doing the Rock Repeats the other day, I doubt it- or being ahead of an incoming weather front- possibly- or what. I just feel tired and not very motivated.

This morning started out rough, we found out that one of Dennis's college teammates had an emergency aneurysm repair after being rushed via helicopter to a hospital in Denver yesterday afternoon. He's my age. I don't even know all the details yet.

And just yesterday I heard about a guy I knew in junior high back in Pennsylvania who suddenly dropped dead from a heart attack, 51 years old.

For some reason those events smack you in the face. I suppose as you get older, these things happen with more frequency and hit closer to home each time. Life is short, live it now.

Reflecting on Life and Death, Writing, Damn Cancer, and Jane Welzel

On August 31, Jane Welzel, a local runner who was a 5 time Olympic Trials marathon qualifier, and winner of many marathons and other events, along with being a well-loved and admired member of the Fort Collins running community, died from cancer.

She had only been diagnosed this spring, but she had a type of cancer that is often very advanced when it is detected and it was really too late to do much for it with the treatments that are available. From what those who were close to her have told me, she was very brave about the whole ordeal and faced it with a realistic attitude, despite the horrible pain and suffering she surely had toward the end of her life.

I have known Jane since 1990, but I didn't ever get to know her well. We ran into each other every couple of years at a local event or on the trails. She was always nice and we'd always chit chat briefly, and then go on about our respective runs. We had different friends and different interests. My husband and she were competing in road races in about the same time frame and I believe they traveled to several races together. I am not sure if she ever ran for Reebok like Dennis did, but Dennis knew her better than I did.

I remember an old friend of ours, Norm, who used to write for several of the local sports publications, interviewed her in 1989 or 1990. At the time, she was about 35, and she was probably at the peak of her running career. We lived on Mountain Avenue at the time, and I can remember him sitting in our living room, talking about Jane and not only how good of a runner she was, but how great of a person she was. He had interviewed lots of runners, a lot of elite runners, and Jane left a big impression on him as the person she was.

I really feel for the running community, those who did know her and loved her. She did a lot for the local runners in addition to putting on events like the Bacon Strip and Mountain Avenue Mile, she started the Tuesday night track group, organized speed workouts in the cemetery, and she provided a lot of support and inspiration for many local runners of all abilities.

It's a huge loss, and losses are not common among fellow runners, because the whole sport of running as we know it has only been around for 40 years or so. It's something that we will begin to face more often.

But it's hard to watch someone not even 60 years old, who was a runner and elite athlete and leader in the running community suddenly go from strong and fit and active to sick and withering away before our eyes.

The runners from the track group dedicated a bench to her at the CSU track called "Quada, Quada" because that is how she pronounced "quarter" in her strong Boston accent. They did it a few weeks ago, while she was still with us, and she was able to be there.

I am glad to see they have already done these things to honor her in life, and now that she is gone, she is being honored in other ways. I am sure that there will be more than one Jane Welzel memorial events in her honor, well-deserved.

I hope that the local runners who knew her will share their feelings with each other and do whatever they can to cope with the loss, because it's really hard for people to come to terms with the fact that she is gone, and from such a brutal disease. Yes, it can happen to anyone. It sounds like this type of cancer was a hereditary one, her brother died from it too.

Being a runner doesn't make you immune at all. Even if there is no family history, cancer is one of those things that at least a third of us, maybe half of us, will have to deal with someday. While 5-10% of cancers are hereditary, meaning passed down from one generation to the next, cancer is often a disease of aging, of genetics, meaning mutations in the DNA, and of numbers. And it presents itself in hundreds of different forms.

What is important is to honor the memory of Jane and what she meant to the running community here. She did the things that money can't buy...providing support and a venue for runners to do what they love, and also championing something she cared about, which happened to be eating disorders.

Most of the readers of this blog didn't know Jane, but I think a good way to honor Jane is to live your life as fully as possible. If there are things you dream of doing but have put off, no matter how old you are, do them. Do them now, or ASAP. Don't wait. Don't make excuses, because the opportunity might not be there someday.

Tonight I went to a local support group meeting, called Sharing the Cancer Journey, that I used to attend regularly when I was working at the hospital there. I used to go in order to listen to the patient's perspective, to understand what people wanted and needed. I learned more from listening to the people in that group than anything my nursing education or on-the-job training ever taught me. I hadn't been there in a long time, not once since I quit the hospital last fall, probably at least a year and half or two years.

The speaker tonight was leading a group activity on writing your story. He was encouraging people to write, because it is a difficult exercise to go back into your traumatic events and relive the details, but it can be very therapeutic and useful for passing along your legacy to future generations. Since I write all the time it was not anything new to me to do it, but I did learn from how the people in the group responded to it. Writing about difficult things is scary, it bring emotions to the surface and painful memories can come back in vivid forms.

But I have learned from years of writing and journaling that getting the toxic and painful feelings out is one of the most freeing and healing things you can do to purge those experiences and heal. Writing it all out, puke on paper, whatever you call it, freehand writing is powerful. I've been doing it again in the mornings to clear my mind of all the clutter I have because of the multiple projects, thoughts and ideas I have right now.

Writing helped me move through my feelings about leaving my old, toxic, evil nursing job. I knew I had arrived at a healing place when tonight I stopped by my old workplace and said hi to my old coworkers. I was able to walk through the hospital without any weird feelings or a sick feeling in my stomach like I used to get.

If you have something nagging at you, or troubling you, write it out. Get it out on paper, hand to pen to paper. Do it first thing in the morning, uninterrupted, for 15 or 30 minutes or as long as you can take.

I wrote tonight about the experience of finding out my sister had cancer. While it happened a while ago and I have processed it, this was the first time I have written it out, and it was therapeutic in a way I haven't experienced with that story.

The point is, don't take life for granted, just because you run doesn't mean you're immortal, and when you have pain in your life, purge it in whatever way you can, I recommend writing. Expressing what's on your mind, either on paper or verbally to someone you feel safe with, is the important thing. Don't hold it in.

That's all I have to say tonight.

Arrival

I'm not even sure where I should start with this post.

When I woke up this morning it was September. I've been looking forward to it, even though it's been one of the best summers I can remember in my adult life. I got to travel, run races, do the things I love to do, and I feel good, I have the time to be at a peaceful place in my life, I've been healthy, and I am excited about upcoming plans.

My biggest worry has been about running lately. And that was just the fatigue that I've been feeling for so long. Last week I only ran 30 miles, actually 29 to be exact. After my run with Wheaties Boy on Wednesday I started thinking more about what I need to NOT do before my race. So I've cut back and I've been taking it a lot easier. And then as I was walking yesterday, I had an epiphany about my race plans that helped even more.

I wasn't even sure if I should run this race today. But I figured it would be a decent workout no matter what. I set my sights on a sub-2 hour finish so as not to be disappointed. My short races this summer have all felt disastrous from a pace and finishing time standpoint. I know I don't need the speed for the 24 hour event, but mentally there's something that nags at you when you're not performing in "short" races. But I signed up for this one last week, and I needed to do a run anyway.

So I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30 to do the Colorado Run half Marathon, which started at Poudre High School and wound through the west side of town and on dirt roads and trails near Hughes Stadium until it hit the Spring Creek bike path and finished at the Fort Collins Club.

The weather was about as perfect as you could ask for, about 50 degrees, which feels cool to everyone after the warm summer. Perfectly clear skies and a slight breeze.

Waiting in line to pick up my race packet, the crowd was energetic and happy. Lots of young people, probably a lot of CSU students who are back now.

I hung out with my friend Joanne at the start, she is tapering for a marathon in two weeks, and I am tapering for my race. We shivered for a while until we went down to the track to warm up. The race started on the Poudre High School track. It is now modern and rubberized, twenty years ago when I was in graduate school at CSU I used to run a lot of quarters on this track, when it was dirt. Back in the day...

There was an issue with the gates being locked so there was about a 10 minute delay for the start, not bad.

Steve announced the start on the megaphone and also told us the news that just yesterday we lost a much loved and admired member of the running community. I will wait to say more in a future post...

We lined up on the track with seconds to spare before a voice said "Go" and we were off. I was still messing with my iPod. I hit the button on my watch and got my act together in the lap around the track before we headed out on the course.

I checked my watch split at one mile and it said 7:56. I wasn't struggling either. The next two rolling miles were just over 8 minutes, then we turned onto the dirt road, hill, and trail section that lasted 3 miles before we headed for the Spring Creek bike path. My slowest mile was uphill on the dirt at 9:10. I had my racing tunes on and tried to concentrate on turning my legs over as fast as I could. I kept thinking at that 8 minute or so pace I would eventually poop out, but I didn't, and by the time we turned onto the bike path and there were 6 miles left, I realized I might be a lot faster than 2 hours. I put it in fast autopilot and kept pushing.

The bike path is slightly downhill and I kept passing people, and holding an 8 ish pace was not that bad. My legs were turning over and I was working hard. At 10 miles I was at 1:24, then I ran 8:11 and 7:56 for my next two splits. At the 12 mile mark, precisely, I felt like I was going to puke. Really. So I pulled over onto the grass, had a quick dry heave that brought nothing up, and I got back on the path, starting slowly, but then picked it up when my stomach didn't complain. I was able to bring my pace back down in the 8s again and finish strong in under 1:50.

Like any good Fort Collins race, when you cross the finish line, they hand you a beer glass. I ended up getting two beer glasses today because my age group award was also a beer glass. Cool. I think I'll fill it with beer later after I get my work done. Joanne also won her age group.

I was very happy with this finishing time, not because I am satisfied with the time itself, but because I ran nearly 20 minutes faster than I did two weeks ago in the first half of the marathon, and 13 minutes faster than I ran the second half of the marathon. And this is the fastest half marathon I've run all year. After just one week of rest, it has already made a difference.

I am so thankful for Wheaties Boy saving my ass again, talking sense into me. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in your own...orifices? and forget what you're doing. It really helps to have a second opinion from someone who knows!

Hanging out at the woman cave is on the agenda for the afternoon. I have some work to do, and then I'll be breaking out those beer glasses.

Back to taper mode...

Getting Back to My Happy Place

I ran a big 2.3 miles this afternoon. But it was the most relaxing and necessary run of the week, wrapping up a lot of emotion and a fitting way to close out the business of my day. After my run, I felt like I could melt into the floor. I finally took a nap, and was able to just close my eyes and sleep.

This morning was Ornella's funeral. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but for me it was a calming, reassuring way to bring closure to an important chapter of my life in a peaceful way. The chapter closing doesn't mean the book is over, though.

I'm not going into a lot of details here, but Ornella was, still is, and always will be a huge part of my inspiration to run Badwater, along with other ultras, and raise funds for the Cancer Center here. Ornella was married to my friend Troy. She fought ovarian cancer for 10 years, all the way to the end, and I've never seen anyone with a tougher spirit than her. She left behind a beautiful family and a legacy of love and kindness.

When I crossed Death Valley in 2008, and in my double crossing in 2011, I carried Ornella in my heart. I thought of the desert crossings as a metaphor for her struggles. One of these days I'll write a more detailed blogpost about that story.

After an emotional week, lots of intermittent meltdowns and not much sleep, I feel like I can now return to the business of my life. I need to start getting organized for my race next week.

Tomorrow I start out the day with a video session, with two runners I know who inspire me, and then I work the weekend. After my weekend I start an 11 day break from work that couldn't have possibly come at a better time. I have lots of exciting stuff planned in the next few months, including my race, the Double Mick, and being on the medical team at Badwater again. I'm also getting started on some new projects at work, related to community health, that will keep me busy.

I feel like I'm getting back to my happy place.

Remembering

The world lost a beautiful, strong, inspirational woman today, with a spirit bigger than a warm spring evening with lilacs blooming, when the late daylight shines through the canopy of baby green leaves shimmering in the breeze.

Love is really all that matters, how you touch people in life, and how you make a positive impact on other people's lives, is what will be remembered.

I wish for everyone that they are surrounded by as much love and peace, when they make their exit from the world we know.

Thank you, Ornella, for the love you gave this world, that will live on in everyone you touched. Rest in love and peace.

Work Hangover Wednesday: Running In My Own Shoes

Running (or walking, as the proverb goes) a mile in someone else's shoes, you can never exactly retrace their steps or footprints, because only one person truly fits in their own shoes. So I run in my own.

Yesterday I got a chance to say goodbye to someone who inspired me, sort of indirectly, but in a very profound way that has impacted my running over the past 5+ years, and going forward. I know this isn't going to make a lot of sense but it's one of those days when I just have to vent on things that happen, and I can't share details. I can only share the emotions and what it means to me.

She has no idea how much her experience has affected me. She doesn't need to know, and I don't feel the need to tell her, because she hardly knew me at all in life. The family she will leave behind understands, and that's more important in this case.

Why am I talking about death in a running blog? Because it's part of my life, everyone else's life, and everyone's running. Even if you're a runner, you're going to die eventually, just like non-runners. And I hope you'll have lived a good deal healthier and more enjoyable life into your older years than most non-runners.

Death is part of what I do. I deal with it in some way almost every day at work, but we're all on the continuum of life and death all the time. They are one and the same, but how you experience it depends on your perspective. You can choose to be dying, or you can choose to be living, regardless of your state of health, attitude, and approach.

I see a lot of people who are dying, and most of the time, they're not the ones with cancer. I take care of a lot of patients who are being treated for infections and wounds as a result of their own self-neglect. Some of them are trying to die, more consciously than not. I can think of a lot quicker and less painful ways to do it.

Don't get me wrong, many, if not most, of the patients I see are nowhere near death. They will probably end up dying in old age like many of us, from some freak thing that happens with their bodies at age 80 or 90-something, that has very little to do with cancer.

What I do at work is odd. It's making the best out of bad situations. Taking a person and the people they are closest to, where they are, at their most difficult, sensitive, fearful, and vulnerable moments, and making that moment as comfortable, peaceful, and maybe memorable for them, if they have the luxury of time.

It's not that I have to put a positive spin on bad things, I don't. I don't say things they want to hear, or that their families want to hear. I just work with the moment, and put my effort into making that go well. I bring a lot of boxes of tissues to the bedside or chairside.

I say what I can, ask questions, and then I call the counselors, social workers, chaplain, or massage therapists, maybe all of them. I can't be those things to people. I can be their nurse, I can carry out the physicians' orders and make them comfortable, and figure out what they need and do everything in my power to get it for them.

I find that I don't often agree with the decisions that patients and family members make when it comes to end of life. It's not how I would do it. It's a time of heightened emotions and stress and it brings out the worst in a lot of people.

Too many people are in denial or ignorance about how close death is, and get taken by surprise when they think it's still far off. They don't see the signs because they don't know what to look for, or what it looks like. Most people would rather not know anything about dying, and I don't blame them for that.

Even people who are in the business of dealing with people at the end of life are not always well-prepared when it's someone they love who is dying. These people need non-judgmental support. They have to go through it in their own way, and we can't possibly understand the path they traveled in order to arrive at their world view. We can only run in our own shoes.

But it doesn't matter what I think. What does matter is that the dying person gets their say, and that things are carried out on their terms, as much as possible. I just keep my mouth shut and carry on with my work, preserving the person's available options until they make a decision, as long as there is nothing that is going to cause harm to them.

Right now it's hard to imagine dying when spring is everywhere. I think that when I reach the finish line, I'd like to die in November or December, when it's cold and gray and the leaves are turning brown and crunchy, and there isn't a lot of nice weather to look forward to for a while.

I don't want to be buried in a cemetery, where my headstone would be lost among the crowds. I'd rather have my ashes scattered by people who knew me and where I'd want to be. At this point I'm torn betweeen Devil's Cornfield in Death Valley, and the slopes of Mt. Silverheels behind our cabin. But that could change someday.

When I was running in the cemetery last week, I saw a headstone that had a person's Ph.D. degree carved in next to their name. I don't think I've ever seen that before, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's common. I wondered if it was the person who died who wanted that on his grave, or if it was a family member who made that choice. Was that what the person wanted to be remembered for?

I also wondered if the aliens who land here in another couple of thousand years will know what a Ph.D. was. Will they care?

I hope I don't have any regrets when I die. What I do want to feel is that I lived my life as fully as I could have every single day, that I did the things that were meaningful to me, and that I am happy with the end result, even if it doesn't amount to something tangible to someone else. I feel like I do a good job of that. Money, toys and things really don't matter, they lose their meaning in death. Love is all that really matters at the end of life.

One thing's for sure, whatever you leave behind, whether it's money or things, it's only the wretched people who are left behind who will fight over the carcass, and that's sad. The thing that turns my stomach the most is when someone dies and the family members fight each other over what's left. I've seen that in happen my own family and that's why those people remain distant relatives.

When I reach the finish line, I won't have anything left. I hope I spend my last dollar on running shoes. Besides, I'll have to work until I croak to make ends meet, like most of my generation. That's okay, because I will have enjoyed the long adventure, and I'll be setting my own PR that no one else will ever beat.

In my own shoes.