I've Been to the Show

Imagine you're a pitcher, a bit past your prime. You spent a few seasons in the Majors, never a star, but a solid middle-reliever type. An injury cost you half a season and you've been working your way back through rehab starts in the minor leagues. You get encouraging text messages from some of your old buddies on the big league club as you begin the long climb back, hoping for one more shot at a ring. You decide to intensify your off-field workouts, so you go particularly hard in your P90X training one evening. That's when the phone rings. The big league club needs an extra arm, and since you've been pitching so well at the AA level, they want you to join the club the next day for a 6 AM game. (I know, but I need the game to be at 6 AM for my analogy to work). You get a decent night's sleep, but despite your best efforts, the game is already underway when you reach the ballpark. You barely have time to lace up your cleats when the starting pitcher goes down with a nasty blister and the skipper calls the bullpen, "that kid form the minor's ever make it here? Good, send him in."

You jump into the game, excited about being back with your old mates. You throw a heater past the league's leading hitter for a strike. But you feel yourself struggling to keep that fastball up in the low 90's. You back off, throwing sliders, and before you know it, you've gotten shelled. You barely make it through an inning, and as you pass the skipper on the dugout steps you say to him, "maybe I'm not ready yet, Skip." "Maybe not kid, but there was only one way to find out."

My running friends have already figured this one out, but for the rest of you, here's the translation. I'm the pitcher, cancer is my injury, the big-league club is a group of 7 runners, mostly my old crew and most of whom are under 40 both in age and 10k times, and the game was an 8 mile run they were all doing today. The inning was the second mile of their planned 8 mile run. My hope was to jump in at mile 1 and do a 6 miler with them. I made it one mile. Too fast a pace, too little recovery from last night's P90X workout, whatever the excuse, I ran out of gas.

I'm not ready to run with the big league club just yet, but I needed to see where I was, so I tried. I'll run with Adam this weekend and work on speed and stamina for a while before my next cup of coffee (more baseball talk, look it up). Now enjoy a scene from the best baseball movie not staring a cocaine addict as a wild relief pitcher.

Post Race Report

Adam and I had a great time running Peachtree, not to mention a Great Time (under 66 minutes).  As you can see by the photo, it was a family affair, assuming an affair involves two people getting sweaty while 3 others cheer them on (Marcie's behind the camera of course).

I was so proud of Adam during the race. He had never run longer than 5 miles before and the conditions at the start were as bad as they've been in 14 years (extra hot and super humid). Still, by the time we crested the hill by Piedmont Hospital (sometimes called Heartbreak Hill or Cardiac Hill), around 4 miles into the run, he was starting to say out loud the things I had planned to say to him:
"OK, that was the last hard hill, right?"
"T-shirt's straight ahead"
"We can do this!"

It was a very cool thing to see him taking on the role of the encourager, even though I didn't need the encouragement. There was no way I wasn't going to match him stride for stride, and when walking, step for step.

I had this sign pasted on my back and received many a compliment along the course, to which I usually responded "thanks, see you at the finish line."


Adam has already asked me what it would take to train for a half-marathon. I felt like Bobby Bonds watching his pre-steroidal offspring Barry lacing up the cleats for the first time. So proud!

A half would be an amazing accomplishment, but we're going to focus on building stamina for shorter stuff for now. And there's no reason we have to be the only Beskinds in the finisher's list next year. Who knows, maybe one day, you'll see all 5 of us kickin' it down Peachtree Street!

PS - My book is very near completion. Hit the link on the right or go to www.facebook.com/cancerhumor  and "like" so I can let you know the minute it's released!

Live From the Chemo Room #9

Something new today - there's a volunteer in the house! Her name is Betty and she's passing out blankets like they're going out of style. Actually, they are kind of out of style already, but that's not important right now.
They are trying to wean me off of Dr. Z. For the second time in a row I saw his PA first, and then was asked if I wanted to see him too. I don't really mind, because in the past I've been that patient who benefitted from the extra time this approach creates in his day. It's all good.
I've made plans to return to Memorial Sloan Kettering later this month. Adam's coming with me and we're making a long weekend of it. I'm just doing a follow up with the Wizard and some genetic work to see if we can figure out why I'm the only one of my 11 cousins on my mom's side who's gotten colon cancer even though all of our parents had it. Shallow end of the gene pool, or maybe the gene pond.
My uncle Joel, the only surviving member of that generation, thinks there may be something to my theory that growing up in the cesspool known as Bayonne, NJ may not have helped the Tasman clan in developing immune systems.
Today's short session is about half over. Avastin down, Zometa to go.

Resetting Expectations

One week from today is the Peachtree Road Race, the World's Largest 10K race. That's 6.2 miles for those of you who ignored metric conversion in school. This wil be something like my 23rd or 24th time running Peachtree. The last dozen times I've finished in the Top 1000 (out of 55,000 entrants) and earned myself a mug commemorating that accomplishment.

This year will be different. Before yesterday, I hadn't completed a run of 6 miles in over 9 months. It's been an annual tradition to run the Peachtree course, then turn around and run back to the start, about a week or two before the race. While we couldn't do that whole distance this year, David P and I did do the final 3.5 miles of the race, including all the uphill portions, and returned to our starting point, for a 7 mile run yesterday. There were walk breaks and the pace was relatively slow, but we finished it. I thank David for slowing down to hang with me.

So I'm confident I could finish the race, probably in the 55 minute range, which was always my goal in the early years at Peachtree. But I'm not going to do that. You see, this year will be Adam's first attempt at Peachtree and I'm really looking forward to running the whole way with him. Well, running and walking. We've been training together the last couple of weeks, and we figure 70 minutes is a good goal for us - running 9.5 to 10 minute miles, with walk breaks of 90 seconds after every 9 minutes. The race starts at 7:30 but our group won't begin until 7:50. The time doesn't matter. What matters is one of my kids is choosing to help me celebrate my comeback from this latest round of battling cancer by doing something I love to do. I hope he loves it too, and that this is the first of many Peachtrees we can experience together.

Next Monday, around 9 a.m., I'm, planning to let out my loudest crossing the finish line exclamation ever, not just because I'm Kicking Cancer's Butt. I'll be yelling with pride for my son, who is turning into quite the young man. Whether he chooses to continue running is entirely up to him. I'm just looking forward to one of my best Peachtrees ever.

More from the Book!

My book, Blood, Sweat, and Tears: A Humorous Guide to Caring for Cancer Patients is coming along. It should be available in ebook format for Kindle, Apple iBook, Nook, etc. next month. Can't wait that long? Well, then have a look at this video. Find out the connection between goat semen and cancer!

Live! From the Chemo Room #8

Well, I'm not off to a good start today. I'm late thanks to road improvements here in NoFuCo. I stopped at Great Harvest for Adele's challah, then returned to a parking lot on 141. Thank goodness for Google Maps on my phone so I could circumnavigate.

Non chemo today. Shouldn't take long. Also going to ask about bloody nose blows and today's new one, blood on my toothbrush of unknown origin (the toothbrush is from Target, it's the blood we're not too sure about.) Not too worried, but I do prefer my blood to remain in its vessels.

UPDATE  - P.A. just told me to use saline spray, change a/c filters, etc. No big deal.

BTW, I exercised for four straight days this week, both running and P90x. What a feeling!

UPDATE #2 - It made my day to see an old friend, fellow Dawg, and former co-worker at chemo today, even though it sucked that she was also there as a patient. See you every 12 weeks, L!

Guess Who's Writing a Book

That's right, me! Thanks to many of you encouraging me to try it, I've started writing a book. Here's a little preview if you're interested: