Chasing Kris

My First Year of Running, (that's how I think of it, like it's a title) included a 7 mile race and two half marathons, with another half marathon relay (that's a quarter marathon, which sounds less impressive).  I was finding my happy pace that year, chugging along toward my first half marathon. To be blunt, it stunk.  It took all my secret dreams of a smooth and easy race and crushed them.  I walked the last 2 miles. Afterward, I dragged my stiff self home and figured I could do better.  So half marathon number two came up and I aced it.  That's a personal definition, as there were so many people who did it "better" than me in terms of time, or energy left over, or really fun outfits.  But for me, I accomplished my goal of proving that I could actually run, with no stops for walking, a half marathon.  But I lost three toenails as a result and took a month off to recover.  That seemed pretty excessive, even to my untrained, newbie running mind.  Do

This little cancer boob nugget of mine has caused me quite enough grief lately.  In deciding what to do about the diagnosis, the prevailing thought was that the first step was to carve it out.  I'm someone who asks a lot of questions and doesn't always go with the conventional wisdom, but all roads seemed to turn to the chop shop on this one. I scheduled my lumpectomy for the end of April.  Despite the fact that it is full on surgery, complete with the tube-down-the-throat complete suite of anesthesia, this did seem like a pretty routine procedure.  Certainly, my doctor seemed well qualified to perform the task and I had no doubt all would be well. I reported for surgery at 7am.  In the paperwork process, they want to know things like whether you have a healthcare directive or a living will.  Let me just say, this is not the most comforting thing to bring up when someone is presenting themselves for what they believe is to be a routine procedure! After the paperwork phase