Good afternoon! What a lovely sunset at 4:09 in the afternoon. Sigh, the only sad part of living north is the early winter sunsets. But they are beautiful!
Lots of ice out there on the trails with all this sun melting the snow during the day and darkness creating an icy sheen overnight. Keep upright my friends! For the near future we will continue to trot from Eau Claire so the freshly cleaned trails can support our pounding. See you there at 9 am!
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A few years ago I was a regular writer for
Impact Magazine. Back then Gord, Pete, and myself would share many stories and ideas with the unsuspecting victim...err public who would try to do what we did. I think only Pete is still his wonderful crazy self. Gord and I have mellowed...sort of. One of my most favourite comments came from this article courtesy of Pete, "When your eyelashes freeze together, stop." I think that says it all. I don't know if this old PDF will work for your reading pleasure, but I will send you a copy if you are interested.
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Our community running buddy and the most Mother's Day winning runs (Ten time winner!) Jeremy Deere and his lovely bride Jeanette are inviting all of us to stride on over (I kill me) to their shop next Wednesday for their annual Friends and Family night. The deals are the best that I know for this type of night. Now if I can just find what I need...
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For
those of you that are feeling slow, unmotivated, or just not sure what the gig
is, I think this story will get you off the couch and back enjoying the breeze
in your bonnet, so to speak. Two things I like about this:
1.
Keep
moving
2.
Box
of Chocolates Marathon
3.
Running
of the Fools
Yep,
that’s three, but the latter makes up for the difference. This article is a couple years old but it reminds us of the importance that Lance Armstrong's influence had on the psyche of millions of people. Yes, some will say he is a cheat and only a cheat, but we do have to look at the whole picture and see that his good might just have outweighed the bad. I don't condone the cheating but I don't think our legacy of the yellow wristband should all be negative. How many lives did he save by being Lance. How many lives did he kill by doping? And...off soapbox.
Cancer
couldn't stop him from his marathon goal
By Jason
English, Mental Floss
(Mental
Floss) -- For a
serious distance runner, 7 hours, 48 minutes is not a great marathon time. But
cut Brian Fugere some slack. He'd been
diagnosed with synovial sarcoma -- a rare soft-tissue cancer -- in his lung. He
was in his fourth cycle of chemotherapy. And he was dragging an IV pole for all
26.2 miles.
Oh, and
this marathon was taking place in a hospital hallway.
When Brian
Fugere started coughing up blood in February 2005, he was an active 47-year-old
who jogged regularly and once finished the Boston Marathon in a respectable 3
hours, 19 minutes.
Life was
good for the father of four and senior partner with consulting giant Deloitte
in San Francisco, California. He had recently gained a small but devout
following after co-authoring "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots"
with Chelsea Hardaway and Jon Warshawsky, a book that espoused the benefits of
straight talk. He appeared on cable news shows and wrote op-ed pieces, and his
work was the subject of a clue on "Jeopardy!" Then came
the news nobody is prepared to hear.
"I
have been diagnosed with a form of cancer called synovial sarcoma," Fugere
wrote friends and colleagues in 2005. "Although this usually shows up in
and around the joints, mine appears to be in my lung. I am having surgery to
remove my lower left lobe, where the tumor has hunkered down. We're going in
for a full assault."
The assault
began at UCSF Medical Center, where doctors removed Fugere's lung-lobe as
planned.
Next up: chemotherapy at Kaiser Walnut Creek Hospital.
The Box
of Chocolates Marathon
When he
first drifted into the oncology floor hallway, he didn't set out to complete a
marathon. Originally he was just trying to keep himself from going stir crazy
during chemo, which came with a few complications, including a blood clot,
pneumonia and anemia.
Fugere had
been reading Lance Armstrong's "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back
to Life," which stressed how important it was to "keep moving."
"So, I
started moving," Fugere said. "I did one, then two, then three, then
four, then five laps. Then I started measuring the distance of a lap around the
cancer ward and figured out it would take 144 laps to do a marathon.
"So
then I figured, why not?"
Fugere
called his hallway odyssey the "Box of Chocolates Marathon,"
borrowing a line from Forrest Gump. ("Life is like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get.")
"I
want to show other chemo patients that you don't have to accept the notion of
lying in bed all day getting liquid Drano pumped into you," Fugere said
the week of the marathon. "Well, you do need to get the liquid Drano --
you just don't need to take it lying down."
When
friends, colleagues and hospital staff members learned of the marathon, they
wanted to help. Many wrote or called to offer their support. Some walked
alongside Fugere, and lots of people opened their wallets. Those 144 laps
raised $42,000 for the Sarcoma Foundation of America. His feat even landed him
in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" that October.
Keep
moving, indeed
Five years
later, Fugere is cancer free. But he's continued to heed Lance Armstrong's
advice.
In April
2009, Fugere and a friend ran the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run in
Sacramento, California. They dubbed their performance "The Running of the
Fools" and raised $31,600 for sarcoma research.
And earlier
this month, he entered the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Race. "I am
attempting to win the 'Over 50, Missing One Lung Lobe' category," he joked
before the event.
It took him
23 hours, 45 minutes, but he finished.
After the race, Fugere was too tired to talk about the
future. But there's little doubt whatever he has planned will make the rest of
us exhausted when he does tell us.
If this doesn't get you off the couch and onto the trails I don't know what will
See you all as we dance with dirt.
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