Running in Celebration

This week we got the wonderful news that Kirsi’s doctors have given her a clean bill of health. After a year of treatments, hair loss and worry, they found no sign of cancer.

Of course, Kirsi’s good news also makes me want to train harder than I ever have in an effort to run a personal best in Chicago – to honour her courage and determination, and to express my great gratitude to all who have contributed to her recovery. To that end, I’ve kept to my training schedule faithfully -- even tackling tempo runs by myself. I found them hard, but – as I keep telling myself – not as hard as fighting cancer.

The news also brought home to me just how necessary organizations like LLSC are. It would be wonderful if every patient and their family received the good news Kirsi got this week. With that in mind, I will be working hard to raise as much money as I can in the coming months. So far, so good. On-line pledges have topped $1,800 with more in the mail, so it seems I am well on my way to reaching my goal of $6,000.

This was also a special week because I met a few of my TNT teammates in person for the first time. Five of us who live here in Ottawa met on Monday evening to get acquainted and talk about possible group fundraising activities. I’ll look forward to getting to know each of them better in the coming months.



The last notable thing about the week was the weather. Summer has finally arrived. On Sunday, when I ran a 14 km long run, it was 26 degrees in the morning. Remarkably, my body didn’t object to the sudden heat – perhaps because it was still relatively cool when I headed out, and I kept properly hydrated throughout. The highpoint of the run was a very brief pause at the Experimental Farm to admire the iris, peony, and columbine beds. I took the photos here with the camera built into my cell phone. Gotta love technology!

Unfortunately, looking at all those beautiful flowers inspired me to head out to the garden to build my new vegetable bed when I got home. I was glad to get my veggies in the ground, but my legs and back let me know I’d overdone it when I crawled out of bed on Monday morning. Lesson learned. Obviously, from now on I need to get my gardening done before I head out on my long runs.