A Tale of T-shirts

A streak is ending this year. For the first time since 1994, I will not join tens of thousands of other runners for Peachtree Road Race on July 4th. That's 19 straight, 22 or 23 overall. The reward for all those hot and hilly 10K's is a collection of rarely worn t-shirts. Marcie, with help from some friends, is turning this collection into a quilt. Here's a small sample of what they have to work with:

This year, cancer has finally gotten the best of me. My breathing is challenged, and Peachtree is no place to test one's limits. I expected to be saddened by this forced retirement, but I'm not. I will surely miss the event: warming up with running pals David, Wes, Elizabeth and others, and seeing all the spectators lining the course, the kids holding signs cheering on their mom and dad, the 20-somethings drinking beer on decks. 

I'm actually grateful that it took 2 1/2 years to get to this point. I not only ran Peachtree twice since all this started, I also finished 4 half-marathons. In fact, other than the initial back pain that lead to my diagnosis, I haven't had any symptoms from the cancer itself until recently. I had side effects from the treatment, but if it weren't for the scans, I wouldn't have known the cancer was still there. 

I am hopeful that the new chemo treatment I started a couple weeks ago will improve things and allow me to get back to running. There are small signs after my first treatment. My breathing has improved. I'm not using the oxygen we'd had delivered to the house 3 weeks ago. And yesterday, I did my first exercise of any kind in many weeks - two sets of push ups, 22 in all. It's a start...

There's another T-shirt I'm starting to wear now. Dr Z used a certain pop-culture reference to describe me a couple weeks ago when we were talking about how fortunate I was to have gone this long without symptoms. Marcie and Josh picked up the corresponding shirt for me this week.

Do you like it?

By the way, retirement may not be forever. I hope to make a spectacular comeback next year. Good luck to those running Peachtree this year. See you soon!