Still Running pg.2

It would take several years, and a lot of mileage, before I felt a few glints of speed during intervals and some strength actually return in my quads. Then, after forever it seemed, in the 2007 Bolder Boulder, I finally finished under an hour, in 58:50. A year later, 58:36. A year later, whoops, a 64:32. But that was okay. That year I had garden-variety plantar fasciitis pain in my left foot. Yes, a real runner's ailment.

Looking Back, it was that race, the Bolder Boulder, more than the positive CT scans, or blood-count reports, or encouraging doctor's words, that allowed me to turn the corner toward normal. A simple race that gave me the complex answer I sought.

So when I pinned on my entrant's bib for the race last spring, I chose not to add a tag that had been offered when I picked up my number; a tag that would identify me as a cancer survivor on the course. I just wanted to blend in. And for more than half the race, that's what I did. I passed some runners, and got passed by others, and checked my splits, and just ran. But then, heading east and away from the Rocky Mountains, near the five-mile marker and water stop, I suddenly found myself shouting, inexplicably, toward the Gatorade volunteers: "I'm a CANCER SURVIVOR!" Then I yelled it again, punching my fist skyward and grabbing a cup of electrolytes: "A SURVIVOR!"

Cancer can do that to you.

I can't explain why those words came out of my mouth. They startled me, the guy who said them. I've never attended a support group along with my colorectal cancer "peeps." Nor have I received postcancer therapy. Yet sometimes, it seems, you can only hold in what you've been holding in for so long. I'm a Survivor.

I know I told myself I was running to be normal again. But if one day you find yourself running solo and screaming hugely, in an event a full decade after you got a life-threatening diagnosis and ended up weeping on the kitchen floor with your wife who's just collapsed in your arms at the shock of it all, well, sometimes you've got to admit that cancer never really leaves your life all the way. Like 100 percent. Sometimes you find, 10 years after your life took a horrible wrong turn, that you may be cancer-free but you're still running from it. And always will be.