Turbulence and Challenge

After a pathetic week with the snow and cold, I finally got out and ran an easy five mile run with Emma on Sunday. We did Bingham Hill, which gave it a little challenge. I didn't feel bad at all running up the steep side and we talked the whole way.

Yesterday I got a good ten miles in on my feet, about seven of those were running. I'm running with Wheaties Boy tonight. It's warm again but windy today. There were whitecaps on the lake when I went out to do a therapeutic walk late this morning.

Now I'm tapping my feet at the desk. It's the calm before the storm. Tomorrow I meet with the marketing firm to plan the last steps before we launch my new service, Cancer Harbors. I'm nervous with anticipation. I don't expect miracles to happen and certainly not overnight success. It's going to be a process, much like an ultra, with ups and downs, good and bad patches, without a finish line on the horizon.

I'm troubled by something I learned yesterday, about one of the runners I've admired for many years, he's in his 80s, and just got some bad medical news. Cancer is something I am around all the time. I hate what this disease does to people, and I like that I am able to intervene in some ways and make things somewhat smoother, even if I can't fix any of it. There's been enough cancer in my family, and around me, in addition to my work and my clients, that it is something I've become used to, but not in a way of losing empathy or numbness.

I do know that burnout is something I will have to avoid, it is always a possibility when you're in healthcare and working with people who have intense needs. There's a certain distance you become able to maintain, but not enough that you can't emotionally grasp what they are experiencing. I don't know how to describe it. The ability to do that must be somewhat of a necessity if you're going to work in this field. You also need to be able to give something back to yourself, to refill your own tank.

Right now in addition to my dad's recent treatment and tentative remission, and the fact that a young person close to our family is in a hospital being prepped for a second bone marrow transplant after a leukemia relapse, and doing all I can to support my stepmom and others through coping with my dad's health problems, and my daily work which involves caring for people going through various phases of treatment or after treatment, it seems like I've been going along doing pretty well.

And then this news yesterday hit me. I was trying to figure out why it bothered me so much. He's lived a long active healthy and fun life. He expresses gratitude for all he's been able to do and experience in his time. It makes me mad that he has to deal with this, but then I know that cancer bully doesn't care, it picks on anyone and for no particular reason.

Those who think that by being a runner, eating healthy food and living a low stress lifestyle they can avoid cancer are just fooling themselves. There are other reasons to take care of yourself, of course, but if you're going to develop cancer, you're going to. At least until the day when we figure out whatever goes on inside our bodies molecularly and genetically to get cancer started and stop it.

Maybe it's because lately I wonder about my own existence, I've been working so hard on Cancer Harbors that I have foregone running, ultras, adventures, traveling, and having the money to do it. I've always felt that if I died tomorrow I would not regret it, I feel like I have packed a lot of living and fun into 52 years. If I'm taking up space on the planet, I need to be contributing something, and by coloring outside the lines and being disruptive and vocal, not following the beaten path, I am.

Recently I've been missing something, and maybe it is the accumulation of the caregiving role combined with the lack of spiritual outlet that running ultradistances gives me. Maybe it's working alone, without coworkers or people to talk to for most of the day, not even having the counsel of Iris and Isabelle anymore, in all of their superior wisdom. I don't know what independent health care providers do to take care of themselves, to cope with the emotional burden of the work they do. I have probably two dozen people I could reach out to, but they're all too far away for face-to-face conversation, in the flesh.

There's also the nagging thought that rarely surfaces but is back there somewhere, with my crazy family history of leukemia and other cancers, and who knows if they are hereditary or just random, that something could be waiting for me up ahead, and I want to be able to face it if I need to, with no regrets. So maybe what I really need to do is start running long again, just getting out on the trails around here more often, being outside and experiencing as much as I can while my resources are limited. Being outdoors always has been my solace. I need to find a way to challenge myself regularly again.

Climbing fences and trees with a corncob in your mouth adds an element of challenge.

Yesterday my friend Marissa saved the day for me, she is putting on another run like the Equinox run we did last spring in Arvada. This time it will be over Labor Day weekend. It will be an early fall equinox event, called "There Goes The Sun". That gives me a little over five months to get ready to spend 12 hours on my feet. I needed that much more than I realized. I'm going.

Beating The Black Friday Blues

If anyone asks me what I did on Black Friday, I will tell them I did all the things I'd prefer to do over shopping with crowds.

I ran in the foothills dragging a tire behind me, and I picked up dog poop in the yard, including some warm fresh ones that Isabelle contributed while I was in the process of picking up the other piles, trying to stay ahead of it before the next snowstorm hits.

I'd rather do those things any day than camp out in front of an electronic gadget store all night with a bunch of other crazed people carrying baseball bats, ready to draw blood in competition for the last iPhone 6, or whatever.

It was a cool morning in the foothills, I ran on the trails around Dixon Reservoir, and saw a lot of other runners and hikers out, an unusual amount of people for a Friday, but it is the holiday weekend, and maybe last night's gluttony convinced them that they should do something physical.

We went over to our friends Melissa and Austin's house again, all of Melissa's family was in, mostly from the East Coast, and it was a low-key and relaxing evening with great food. They had some technical issues with their oven and stove not working so Melissa and I devised creative ways to finish cooking the green bean casserole and potatoes. They live on the north end of town, so we got to see this sunset looking east toward the Budweiser plant, that's the picture at the beginning of this post.

Yesterday I went out for about an hour run and it was torture every step of the way. I went out the Power Trail and I thought I would pop my eyeballs out from the mental strain of feeling like it would never end. I just cannot get myself to run the bike paths and streets right now.

Then this morning I went to the foothills trails and I was fine, almost. I did have a slight problem with the time out there, it did seem like forever in the middle of the run, but at the end it was okay and I didn't mind getting the tire out and doing an extra mile and a quarter with it on the hill.

And I kept stopping to take pictures of the leaves in the water and under the ice at the reservoir. I'm hoping I can motivate myself to run both days this weekend. Early this week I managed to run on Monday but couldn't get motivated on Tuesday or Wednesday at all.

I wish I knew what the magic formula is right now to keep me going. I don't like to drive anywhere to run if I can avoid it. But I have exhausted all my usual running places here on the east side of town, it's all sidewalks, streets, and bike paths in every direction, with a few short exceptions. Looks like I'll have to start doing some driving to get myself excited to run anywhere for a while.

I just cracked open a VERY cold Odell Isolation Ale. And there's a VERY warm hot tub waiting for me.

Cheers. To Black Friday...

Gut Feelings and Decisions

I have hit a point of burnout and I need a break from racing. So I will do that and put my energy into adventure type runs as I go into this coming year.

I'm not talking commercially-run adventure races that are so popular. I mean my own personal homegrown low-key on a whim exploration adventures. At the current moment no races appeal to me. I can't even get myself to sign up for the Pemberton 50K.

I am lucky right now to get myself to do a daily workout at all. I have been more consistent the past two weeks, I am doing something each day, but I have been struggling mentally with it. Each day it becomes a challenge to get my butt out the door, even for an hour. And if I don't get out the door, it's a challenge to get my butt on the bike. And I can't even fathom going over to the pool.

Yesterday I received an email from Pearl Izumi reminding me and all the others on the promotional team that they are taking applications for next year. I have made an executive decision not to apply for 2015. I really don't want to feel obligated to attend races or events this coming year. And I am ready for a break. I just want to run when and where I want to run, without feeling like I have to represent something. It was fun and I love their products, but it doesn't make sense for me to do something when my heart isn't in it, so I will relinquish that and let someone else have the opportunity. I need a physical and mental break from all of it.

My heart right now is in developing my business further and in writing. I haven't been doing very frequent blogposts because I've been putting a substantial amount of energy into a separate writing project. I suppose that's where my energy from running has gone. It's okay.

This blog is approaching a quarter million pageviews, while I know there are always a good number of those that are fake spambot-type hits, the readership has gone up exponentially over the last year. I find it interesting that I get so many readers from health care as I do running. I know there is a need for expression of the frustrations of health care workers and since they can't express it freely in their own workplaces due to the inability to trust others, and the suppression of free speech in the workplace, they look to other outlets. There's a lot to say, worthy of a big fat manuscript.

Reading social media comments makes it obvious that it's a widespread phenomenon. The sociopaths of the world who buy politicians and shape the political landscape to their advantage don't care if they are exposed, because sociopaths have no conscience.

But there are plenty of warped, fundamentally insecure individuals who reside in the organizations that benefit from these conditions that are fertile for exploitation. With their sick, twisted motives to protect their self-interest, for power, status, money, or sadistic thrills, they thrive at the expense of a lot of wounded human beings who thought they were getting into it to care for others.

And our numbing apathy or apathetic numbing enables it. Good health is important, but we don't value it nearly enough until we get sick. When you enter the health care system, whether against your best intentions as a patient or as a health care worker who needs a paycheck, the lights go on. The true sickness of our health care system is exposed. But much of the general public doesn't see this until it's too late.

I want to chip away at the conscience of people who are already feeling the effects, and I don't have any illusions of changing the world or health care. What I do hope to do is make a few people more aware and remind them, again, as others have, that we are not doing ourselves any favors by sitting back and allowing the country to slip deeper into the oligarchy we have. And from there, to move into action.

Even if it's only a few who take action, it chips away at the outer shell. Eventually if you chip away enough, the core gets exposed and the guts fall out. Health care needs a good exenteration.