Thanksgiving 5K Race Report

 Way back in the year 2008 I started running races, including the Ayer Fire Department 5K on Thanksgiving day.  Every Thanksgiving day since I've run the same race, until this year when it was canceled due to the pandemic.  Being stubborn, perhaps even a bit obstinate, I wasn't going to let that stop me from continuing my streak of running a 5K on Thanksgiving day.  But how to do that when all races have been canceled?

The remainder of this post will make more sense if you remember what it was like to be a kid.  A simple game of whiffle ball in the street wasn't just a game a whiffle ball, it was frequently the 7th game of the world series.  So with my tongue firmly in my cheek and imagination on overdrive, I humbly submit my race report for this year's Windham Turkey Trot 5K.

This race was initially conceived a couple years ago, when I observed that the shortest loop I could run near our weekend getaway was very close to a 5K distance, give or take a few hundred feet.  It's hilly, has a couple good mountain views when the weather is clear, and goes right by the pond.  A scenic and challenging course indeed!

A couple days ago I appointed myself race director.  Due to the pandemic and lack of any parking at the start/finish line, entries were strictly capped at one runner on a first come first served basis.  Of course, I signed myself up a nanosecond after registration opened.

Now at this point it should be mentioned that people outside of the USA have read my blog and know that I'm a runner, which means I'm a world famous runner.  Normally, at they Ayer 5K the streets are lined with hundreds of my fans cheering me on.  They cheer on the other runners too, but it's a poorly kept secret that I'm their favorite.

Once again the pandemic is interfering with things, and I had to ask all my fans and the residents of Windham not to come out and cheer me on at this year's 5K.  I was humbled at how they responded.  Not a single person was anywhere to be seen along the entire course!

In honor of the canceled fire department 5K I'd normally be running, the dry fire hydrant at the side of the pond was chosen as the start/finish line.  At some rather random time in the early afternoon, I toed the start line, counted down, started my watch, and off I went.

The course starts out flat for a few hundred feet, until it goes past the manmade dam that formed the pond.  At that point it dips slightly, goes around a curve, and then steeply uphill.  That's followed by a steep downhill, then another steep uphill that leads out to the main paved road.  Up until there it's a rather soft and squishy surface due to the rain falling on the gravel road.

In my best days, I could never maintain a run up these steep hills which frequently exceed a 10% grade.  In my rather anemic condition, a casual walk uphill is a hard effort, and I only jog on the downhills.  My target time was about 55 minutes, which is not quite twice as long as it took for me to run a 5K a year ago, when my hemoglobin (Hgb) was at the low end of normal.

Allow me to go off on a tangent and say I don't understand anemia.  Due to all the chemotherapy I've received this year, my Hgb had dropped from the mid 13s down to the low 11s, or about a 20% drop.  This is considered mild anemia.  I'd reasonably expect my runs to take about 20% longer, but in practice it's closer to 100%.  Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way.

Anemia is considered life threatening when Hgb drops to about 6.5.  Below that the blood can't get enough oxygen to vital organs and they begin to fail.  Using that as a reference point, when my Hgb is 13.5 I'm about 7 units above what's needed to just maintain life.  At 11.1 (my last reading) there's only about 4.6 units to spare.  When viewed that way, and considering it's more difficult to maintain high heart rates during chemo, it suddenly makes sense that my running times have almost doubled.  I'm not a doctor, just a curious cancer patient and these are the things I think about when I'm not feeling well, have internet access, and too much time to think about such things.

Back to the 5K.  Once out on the main road it alternates between uphill and steep uphill until approximately the halfway point.  Then it flattens out for a short bit and goes steeply downhill.  The best views are right around the start of the downhill, but due to the weather visibility was limited.  Still, it was scenic to look at the hillside not far away and see a layer of clouds near its summit.  Down below the hill at the bottom of the valley is the road I'd be turning onto shortly.

I normally fly down this hill, but today I was content, perhaps overjoyed that gravity allowed me to manage a slow jog for more than a minute.  At the bottom of the hill, a left turn puts me back on the gravel road that goes through the valley and back towards the start/finish line.

This is a mostly flat section of gravel road that I usually cover near the end of any number of routes I run in the area.  It's a stretch of road associated with exhaustion near the end of a run, combined with the adrenaline rush of knowing the finish is near.  I started alternating running with walking, being careful not to put myself too deep into the red zone that would cause consequences later.  Suffice to say I was leading a 5K for the first time in my life (and being the only entrant, bringing up the rear at the same time), and the adrenaline was making me go faster than I normally would on a routine run.

I crossed the finish line in a record setting time of 53:02.  That's the nice thing about being the only runner in a race that's never been run before: If you finish you're guaranteed to set a record.  After crossing the finish line, a heated dispute erupted between me, the runner and me, the race director.

This course was not formally measured before hand.  It was decided by the race director that the start and finish should be at the hydrant for simplicity, and if the race distance wasn't exact it wouldn't matter because all runners have to run the same distance.

But this course turned out to be slightly long.  Me, the runner, argued that it would be closer to 5K if the finish line was at the utility pole before the hydrant, and the several hundred feet of extra distance makes comparisons with other 5K times difficult.  Me, the race director said that the finish line was chosen before the start of the race, and if I didn't shut up I'd be forced to disqualify myself for arguing with the race director.  Geeze, what a dictator that guy is.

Even with the extra distance, I beat my time goal by about two minutes.  The weather was also weird because at the start it was raining lightly with fog blowing off of the pond.  Out on the main road there was pale blue sky overhead and hints of sunshine.  But back at the finish it was still foggy, and as I write this not too far from the finish line it is decidedly cloudy and foggy.  This isn't the first time this has happened.  It's like our weekend getaway has one of those cartoon clouds semi-permanently lingering over it.

And that was my Thanksgiving day 5K for 2020, extending my streak to 13 consecutive years.  In a way, the pandemic worked out well for me this year.  I tend to wake up with a benadryl hangover and don't move too well until the anti-inflammatories kick in.  It would take some planning and effort to get out the door and be ready for an 8am race start in another town.  Being able to walk to the start line at my leisure in the afternoon worked out really well for me this year.

It's strange, but even though this is largely make believe, just having the idea that I would race a 5K on Thanksgiving day gave me something to look forward to, and just like an actual race I pushed harder than normal, and even harder still when the finish line came into sight.

Quick Post

I'm going to try to write a blog post from start to finish in about an hour.  Perhaps that way it won't become out of date before I publish it.  This is as close to live blogging as I get.

Today is Sunday, and it's a grey, cold day in New England.  I had my second infusion of cabazitaxel six days ago on Monday, and all else being equal (it never is) this is usually when I expect to start feeling better.  Better is a relative term.  I spent about an hour in the bathroom last night as the lower portion of my GI tract tried to decided if it had diarrhea or not.  The experience was enhanced by just enough nausea that I asked my wife to get me a bucket.  Fun times!  Living each moment to the fullest!

Back to the grey, cold today, and what isn't equal.  I've been cutting back on a couple medications like Bupropion, which is an antidepressant that normally lifts my mood and gives me some energy in the short, dark days of winter.  Unfortunately when I try to go up to two doses a day this year it just makes me anxious.  I'm also tapering off Prednisone since I no longer need it.  Prednisone withdrawal symptoms include aches, pains, nausea, and fatigue, in other words stopping it now is precisely what you'd do if you wanted to accentuate the side effects of chemotherapy.

I woke up this morning and many of my bones hurt.  My guess is this is a combination of cancer and Neulasta.  Neulasta is a drug that boosts immune cell production, and is thought to cause bone marrow to swell slightly as a side effect.  When that marrow is in a cancer damaged bone, "ouch" is a good word to use.

I disregard most of this pain because it came on all at once a couple days after chemo, which in my mind usually means it's a side effect.  However, there is one specific rib that is particularly painful, and has a lump I can feel under my skin, and it can be very painful to touch.  I assume this is also the same rib that was noted as having progression in my last CT scan.  It takes super-human skill not to freak out when you can physically feel a tumor on your bone when you're laying in bed, and see the bump in your skin when the sunlight coming in at a low winter angle hits it just right.  I'm not super human, I do freak out.

But there's every reason to believe that bit of cancer is being attacked by the chemo.  I've certainly had treatments before which has made pain worse, but a subsequent scan shows improvement.  If it doesn't respond to chemo, it might be a good target for a few zaps of radiation.

So back to this morning.  Pain, fatigue, lack of motivation.  I'm just plain old tired of laying on the couch or in bed all day, watching TV and playing games on my tablet.  I know what's going to happen next.  I'm going to cry, and I'm going to get all worked up about all the things I can't do anymore, and then a week or so from now I'll be doing them, but perhaps a bit slower due to anemia.

There was no other choice.  I forced myself out and into the car and took a short road trip to Erving state forest.  It's just a random destination I've never been to about an hour's drive away from home, and at this time of year there shouldn't be many people around.  I was in mild pain and somewhat anxious, but if I took anything for those symptoms it might affect my driving.  Sober and uncomfortable it is.

My only regret on this trip was that when I stopped for gas, it wasn't at an Irving brand gas station.  The wordplay of stopping at Irving on the way to Erving would have made me smile.  Oh, and I also wish I brought a water bottle along and a few ginger chews for transient nausea.

Having put "Erving State Forest" into Google Maps, I simply followed the directions to my destination.  In this case it was a parking lot next to Laurel Lake.  There's a lot of mountain laurels in the surrounding woods, and apparently they named the lake as quickly as I'm writing this post.

Here's a selfie of me in the parking lot.  If you zoom in you might be able to make out the "Erving State Forest" sign behind the car.  You'll also notice that I have a very full head of hair, as it's showing no sign of even thinning on this chemotherapy.  That is somewhat unfortunate as I'll have to figure out what to do to control it as it gets longer and more unruly.  Having one's hair fall out does save a lot of angst over how to style the stupid stuff.  I'm also quite scruffy, because shaving requires just a bit more effort and enthusiasm than I've been able to muster for the last several days.  Remember, I didn't take this trip for the joy of the open road, it was to avoid a meltdown if I didn't go.  It's mostly stick and no carrot.

It was a very short walk to the beach on the lake.  I don't know why everybody is complaining about people who don't social distance on the beach, I had the whole place to myself.  Of course, this isn't exactly Florida, and it was cloudy and 40 degrees.  Even I couldn't get a sunburn on a day like this.

I tried walking along a path at the edge of the beach that went along the shore, only it wasn't very much of a path.  There wasn't much brush so it was pretty easy to travel through the woods, and there were picnic tables and grills scattered about in the woods.  I wonder how they got there with no trail or access roads.  Do people brute force these things and carry them by hand in this day and age?  Once again, nobody around.

Shortly afterwards I went from the woods back to the paved road along the lake, which was much easier walking except for the hills (it is New England, nothing is ever flat).  Not too far from the beach there were several seasonal cabins, and I could see a number of them on the other side of the lake.  I came across a boat ramp further down, and was surprised to see they allow water skiing.  It's a tiny lake, at water skiing speeds you'd be across it in about a minute.

And so, these are the lengths I need to go to in order to keep my spirits up, with cancer, during a pandemic, when I'm afraid to start a conversation with certain people for fear of politics coming up.  Election week was very stressful for me, and it continues to be stressful if I watch the news too much.  It's no longer about which policies are best for the country.  It's about whether you believe the Democrats committed fraud by adding illegal votes to the election, or that the Republicans committed fraud by claiming there are a large number of "illegal ballots" that don't actually exist.  Neither answer points to us living in a well functioning democracy, and that's just depressing.

At the risk of ending on a happy note, I'm still here on the planet and partaking in the game of life, and my urinary function is continuing to improve.  I pass clear yellow urine without pain, don't leak when it's not time to go, and now have enough bladder capacity and lack of urgency to sleep through the night without having to get up to pee.  Things have improved noticeably since starting chemo, and perhaps that's a sign that chemo is working.

Fingers crossed that this chemo is working.  As I got back to the parking lot I found a hiking trail that claimed to have views of Mt. Monadnock, and didn't have the energy or time to explore it.  I must return to this place for more exploration, and I'm far from done poking around the less populated areas of New England.