The Heartland 30K Challenge

Or how I did a little scope creep and ran three 10K races instead of just one.

Backstory:

• Was diagnosed with melanoma in August, 2017. Got that removed and dealt with the mental side of having a really nasty cancer, mostly by running.
• Broke my pelvis May 2018 (actually ran two races on it because I thought it was a groin strain—nope, I fractured it and was on crutches for nearly 10 weeks). I was dx’d with osteopenia then. I started slowly training last fall, swam first then ditched the pool and did a walk/trot combo for a bit. Still had a lot of pain but turns out the bone I broke is notorious for that and I’ll probably always have that pain.
• OK so by March this year, I was getting my base built—still nowhere near the 30-35 miles a week I was running in 2018 but working on it. Then I got dx’d with breast cancer April 9.

After the Plaza 10K

Condense all this down: surgery in May, radiation the entire month of June (I ran all the way through radiation treatments, slowly but by golly I ran). And I signed up for the Plaza 10K race as my first race after all of that.

I’ll be honest, the race didn’t go as well as I hoped. I trained well, worked hard but when my radiology oncologist said recovery from radiation takes four to six months, she wasn’t lying. My heart rate wouldn’t stay down, the rain wasn’t pleasant and long story short, I ran 1 hour, 42 seconds.

1st in my age group

The second 10K was the following Sunday (the Great Plains 10K) and the weather was much different, cooler and sunny at first but then . . . boy oh boy the temps rose like crazy. I also didn’t realize this 10K was mostly on a trail, and while the trail was in good condition, I don’t ever run on trails. I knew I hadn’t run my best race, not even close, but since I had to wait for my husband to finish, I figured I might as well get my time. I was gobsmacked when the lady said oh you came in first for your age group.

Say WHAT?! That’s the first time ever for me—I sort of felt like a fraud because my time was slower than the week before (1:01:04) and yet somehow that was first in my age group.

This photo of Kent
really shows the rain.

Then last Sunday, I ran the third 10K (Dot to Dot). We had terrible thunderstorms forecast that morning, so I wasn’t even sure the race would happen. But it did . . . in absolute torrential rain. I’ve never run in rain like that, not ever. But it wasn’t hot, and the course wasn’t on a trail and I finally, finally broke one hour: 58:53. Still not my PR but holy cow I was ecstatic about that finish AND I won my age group again!

To top it all off, the final results for the Heartland 30K Challenge were posted on Thursday and I won my age group for the whole thing.

What’s next for me? I need to build my stamina back up and continue building my base. I’m toying with the idea of running the Kansas City Marathon’s 10K race on October 19, but not entirely positive that’s a good idea. It's an incredibly hilly race, plus I’ve just started on two new drugs, one for the cancer and one for my bones, so I need to make sure those play nice with me.

Here's how rainy it was for the Dot to Dot 10K:

Tomorrow is D Day

In April, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my medical oncologist laid out his preferred plan of treatment after I’d had surgery and radiation. Because I’d been diagnosed with osteopenia (later changed to osteoporosis by my endocrinologist), aromatase inhibitors were off the table. They weaken bones and mine are already compromised. So instead, he told me I would be taking tamoxifen, 20 mg a day for probably five years, maybe more.

I'm not at all excited about taking tamoxifen. It's got some well-known common side effects that would greatly interfere with activities I enjoy. I'm not sure how much I'm willing to tolerate there, to be honest, especially since tamoxifen reduces the risk of cancer recurring by less than 10% for me. Diet and exercise give me far more bang for the buck with a 40% reduction in risk. Still, I'm not as low risk as I would have hoped, and one of the pathology reports indicated I had some lymphovascular invasion. That isn't necessarily a sign that this cancer will return or metastasize some place else but it's something to keep in mind.

So I’ve wrestled with whether I’m up for going on this drug. And as I told my MO, I had already signed up for a 10K race—the Plaza 10K which was two weeks ago—and I didn’t want to go on anything until after that race.

He agreed to that delay, which of course I’ve scope creeped by adding in two more 10K races, which were all part of the Heartland 30K Challenge (you can read about the Challenge here and I'll write more about those races later this week). And in the meantime, I ended up going on Prolia a week ago last Friday. Again, I would have preferred to start that drug after these three races were over, but my hip hurts all the time where I broke it and I’m highly, highly motivated to save my bones from something I clearly have.

In the last 10 days, I’ve unfortunately experienced some side effects from Prolia. That’s a little discouraging to be honest. Joint pain where I’ve never had any joint pain, muscle pain too, dry mouth—nothing major but still annoying. But at least I know what the Prolia feels like on its own.

And now tomorrow I guess I’ll find out what the tamoxifen feels like. I’m doing the slowest ramp up in the world—I’m starting with 5 mg a day and I’ll see how that feels. If I’m lucky and don’t have any side effects, I’ll go to 10 mg. But slow and steady is my motto on this part of my cancer treatment.

Bought a fancy pants pill splitter just for this drug.

When you don't want to lose the view

But you need just a bit of privacy, you add very sheer sheers.

Or at least we did. We knew that removing the trees and massively overgrown bushes meant we would also lose the jungle feel and the green privacy all that overgrowth provided. But we wanted to preserve the view as much as possible. So I altered these sheers from IKEA to be essentially flat panels.

At some point, the red twig dogwoods we planted at the fence line may provide some privacy. Until then, it's IKEA again to the rescue. 

There’s no pretty bow on the package

I’m at that stage of cancer treatment where people ask me how I’m doing with the clear and obvious expectation that I’ll say “doing great! Everything is wonderful!” They’ll say something like “so you’re OK now, right? The cancer is gone, right?”

The thing is, that’s not how this works. While my long-term prognosis is good, there’s absolutely no way to know if I’m cancer free. Cells are tiny, and even with surgery you can never be sure all of them were removed. That’s why most of us get additional treatment too: radiation to kill anything left in the surgery area, chemo depending on the kind of cancer, and drugs taken long-term to help starve any cancer cells that escaped the other treatments. As one article I read put it: you’ll know you’re cancer-free when you die from something else.

And now I’m dealing with physical, emotional and mental fallout from the cancer. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and did a lot of work in my 30s recovering from that. Much to my horrified and complete surprise, this diagnosis and especially some of the tests or procedures has brought back the PTSD with a roaring nasty vengeance. I’m back to the hyper awareness that served me well as a small child but is completely exhausting as an adult. I’m having to dig back into the past, not a fun place to go, and recategorize and recode all of those memories in light of some of the procedures I found so traumatizing. All very vague, sorry not sorry—here’s a small example. I’ve had I don’t know, three or four MRIs of my head and did just fine with those. But the breast MRI about undid me—backwards and face down. As I told my radiology oncologist when she questioned why I asked for something to calm me down, that was a bridge way too far.

And I’m still trying to find my new normal in the physical sense. As I told the psychologist I’m seeing through the breast cancer center, I see the evidence of this disease every single time I get into the shower and get out of the shower. I still have limited range of motion in my left arm despite doing everything I’m supposed to do. My running is impeded by both my reduced stamina from radiation and from the continuing pain in my left pec (which also got radiated) and my left arm. You know it’s bad when I tell you that I often have to sort of hook my left hand into my waistband to give everything a rest.

I’ve been seeing the OT for about 6 weeks; on Friday (which should have been my last appointment) she recommended another 4 weeks. Unfortunately, I think she’s right.

I’ll also say I am not looking forward to the pinkification and sexualization of breast cancer next month. Please, I implore you, say no to the pink, worry less about saving the tahtahs and more about helping us save our lives. 

Sunshine is here!

I dare to hope we can have a pollenator garden next year.

back yard

looking east

straight back from the patio

Sunshine's coming

Nearly 15 years ago (what? How can that be?), we lived in a home built in 1905. Unfortunately, someone along the way put in a hideous late 1980s/early 1990s kitchen that not only took up all the floor space but also created a complete choke point between the dishwasher, sink and trash compactor. Why anyone thought they needed a trash compactor was beyond both of us but there it was, in all its smelly glory in the middle of the stupidest peninsula in the world:

See how cramped that kitchen looked?

I moaned and groaned and complained about that kitchen from the very beginning—I hated that peninsula and the trash compactor and the ugly light oak trim on jade green counters.

In late 2005, I ended up having major surgery and while doped up on prescription pain meds, I told Kent I wanted that peninsula GONE. He asked if I were sure about that, could I live without the extra storage and countertop? Hell YES I could. So he fired up his circular saw and took that sucker out.

We lived with it that way for about  year and then ended up renovating our kitchen shortly before we moved to Boston. The only thing that bugged me about that process was how little time we got to enjoy that kitchen before we moved.

Flash forward to this house—the yard is a lot to handle. The previous owner and her parents (who owned the house before she did) planted a ton of trees.

As is often the case, they forgot that a tiny oak tree which looks great right by the patio will end up destroying the house’s foundation.

And they forgot that all those trees would end up creating a shade canopy that doesn’t let anything else grow properly, not even the trees.

So it all started with us deciding this problem was more than we could handle. So we wrote two checks, one for plant removal and one to take out a tree, and got these results:

 Ahhhhmazing.

Then just yesterday, I noticed that our gigantic, planted in probably 1957 gum ball tree lost a huge limb in last week’s storms. We’re lucky it didn’t damage our garage roof. So we called the same tree guys back again.


Long story short, we’re having them take out about seven trees. It will take a few days for them to get all the trees done but in the meantime, this photo shows a glimpse of the sunshine yet to come.