signs of spring in Ohio

Signs of spring in Ohio … Even if it is 37 degrees right now and raining …

cold O-h-i-o

It is bitterly cold up here in northeastern Ohio, but the late February snow storm has left my hometown and my running trails looking rather starkly, icily, beautiful.

Winter Running Pictures

A collection of some cold weather images from around the park where I run. Enjoy!

We had some sixty degree days — record high temps — which are rarer than hen’s teeth in January. Unfortunately, we did not get much sun to go along with the warm temps. It rained a lot.

These mallard ducks were swimming around in a very large puddle. I kid you not, that’s not a pond, that is a puddle!

(There were probably at least a dozen ducks swimming around this puddle. I couldn’t resist the picture.)

View of the Rocky River from the top of Cedar Point hill. You can see the large shale cliffs that make up the Rocky River Valley. This is from the top of one of the trails near the Nature Center.

(I completely trashed my Mizuno running shoes by running through the mud. They are now a kind of ugly grayish tan color rather than white. Oh well.)

Here are some pictures in the snow:

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

an essay about running

This is an essay I wrote about running. A few of my friends I shared it with liked it a lot and submitted it to be considered for publication by Runner’s World. I greatly appreciate the sentiment and am deeply flattered, but I know the odds RW will publish it are very long.

Anyway, although this piece is very personal and quite lengthy (four pages single-spaced), I thought I’d share it here. It is written to a runner audience, though others are free to read it too (just you may not quite understand it as much). I stuck it in the Hodgkin’s Category and in the Running Category, but it’s really written for the runners.

—-

Why Running is Important to Me.

An essay about running written by a cancer survivor.

I have run this trail so many times that I know every nuance. The trail is actually meant for horses, but the running community seems to utilize it more than equestrians. It is packed dirt, the perfect running surface, the perfect length, three miles out, three miles back. I know this trail as well as I know the map of veins on the back of my hands. It is mainly a flat and featureless trail, but I know where each of the subtle dips and rises are located. I know where the best views of the Rocky River are; where you are most likely to spot a stately heron stalking for fish or a bright snowy white egret with a bright yellow beak. I also know where the rocks underfoot are and where it is likely to be soft and muddy.

I love the trail; I love the soft surface, the smell of the shale, the high ancient cliffs that rise above it. I love how the river changes, sometimes subtly, sometimes severely, as though it were a living thing. I find a certain thrill when I run next to the river when it is high and rushing like a torrent, but I also enjoy it when the water level is low and the river moves sluggishly too. I even enjoy running under the two bridges that span it. One bridge is old, white, stately. The other is a highway bridge, a pale blue-green, functional but not beautiful. I always sprint under the bridges, the sound of traffic far overhead urging me not to dally.

I’ve had good, glorious days on this trail. I’ve also had terrible days that I would as soon forget. You see, this is where I not only run, this is where I find solace, where I go when I need to escape.

One of the very worst days: the day I was diagnosed with cancer. It was Valentine’s Day and Cleveland was buried in a snow so significant that even the courts were closed. I don’t remember much about that day, that day everything changed, what and how I exactly felt, but I do remember going out running, out on my trail that was covered with a thick and heavy white blanket of two feet of snow. I did not get very far (snow is very difficult to run through), but I can remember standing about a mile out, my breath appearing as thick clouds of white steam in the bitter air, and saying out loud, “Why me?!?” When it snows, the world becomes very silent and still. And so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when there was no answer.

The next week was a whirlwind of tests. PET scan, MUGA scan, pulmonary function test. There was simply no time to run on my trail. Every day for a week there was a test, and it all sort of blurred together. The entire diagnosis and chemo process even now is sort of fragmentary; I remember images and scenes, but most of it is just a hazy memory, sort of like a bad dream that you can kind of remember only terrifying bits and pieces of when you wake up. It is almost as though I did not actually go through it. It was almost as if I watched it from afar.

I didn’t know if I was going to be able to run while doing chemo. I had asked my doctor at the initial visit — the same visit where he pulled out a tape measure to figure out just how large my abdominal mass was (I was not offended, actually thought it almost absurd) — if I could keep running and he said, sure if I felt like it. I could tell he didn’t think I’d feel like it.

I knew, though, if I was going to survive, I’d have to keep running. I knew it instinctively. It was as though running was as essential as breathing. Life is nothing without passion; I have two real, true passions, Civil War history and running. Those two things make life worth living. And so I decided no matter what I was going to try and run even through chemo. The day before my first chemo, a surgeon was placing a port — a central line device used to spare your veins from being burned by the noxious chemicals and poisons — in my chest. My chest masses were so immense that the surgeon didn’t think he could manage to squeeze the port in amongst the enlarged lymph nodes. We should put it in your leg, he said. This would mean no running for the duration. I was staring at the daunting prospect of eight months of chemo. Eight months with no running? I said no way. I’d rather be burned inside out than not be able to run. The surgeon, a triathlete himself who I think understood why I needed to at least maintain the illusion that I was going to run my way through this mess, found a way to fit the little metal disk into my chest.

Chemo further depleted my blood of hemoglobin — that little iron-based protein that carries oxygen around your body. My counts had already been ravaged by cancer. The first week after chemo, I was dizzy and my heart raced. I could hear it when I tried to sleep at night, thudding in my ears. Still, I would go out and jog around the block a few times. Going out after chemo to run was very hard, particularly because it was very cold and the streets were covered in snow and ice. I stuck to my neighborhood. I was too dizzy to drive to my trail and far too weak to even think of attempting the large hills I’d have to run up and down to get there from my house. But eventually the snow melted. And so, amazingly, did my masses. My blood counts actually started to improve as the disease was knocked into submission. I went back to the trail. I watched it slowly come alive and turn green. I marveled at the little, delicate flowers that peppered the ground with white, pink, purple. I was blessed a few times to see a doe with a brand new, spindly legged fawn, still covered in spots. The birds returned.

Spring eventually softened into summer. The air became warmer and thicker, the days much longer. And my trail became something like a tunnel cut through a jungle canopy, a ribbon of dirt through a mass of thick, bright greens.

Summer was rough. The thing about chemo is the drugs don’t just target the bad cells. No. Unfortunately, chemo is not a smart weapon, it does not know enough to make just a targeted attack on the bad cells that are dividing out of control. Chemo is a poison and it kills indiscriminately, targeting good cells and bad ones alike. Chemo therefore causes lots of collateral damage: to your hair, to the lining of your stomach, to your skin. It can cause so much other damage — even occasionally other cancers, a future leukemia is a possibility for Hodgkin’s survivors, for example — that you end up with the equivalent of a Pyrrhic victory. Although I was lucky to keep most of my hair (which I feared was likely as doomed as Custer’s men at the Little Big Horn), my lungs took a real beating from the drug Bleomycin. Bleomycin is the least effective of the four drugs used to treat Hodgkin’s Disease. Ironically, it also causes the most problems. My right lung filled up with blood and pus from Bleo damage, and even after discontinuing the drug (which is very commonly done), I struggled for a long time to even walk up the steep stairs in my house without gasping for breath.

I’m not sure why I kept running. Or rather I should say kept trying to run because by this point I was no longer really running. I suppose I desperately wanted to cling to an essential piece of my identity. Chemo tends to rip away your identity and leave you in tatters and pieces — I had reached the point where I knew I could not practice law for much longer. My hair was thinning. I was losing weight. I had a tan from being outside so much, but my face was as white as a sheet. And swollen. My face was constantly puffy, as though I had just gone a few rounds in a fight. Psychologically, I was a mess — I was by turns depressed and then very angry. I had no business running, but I just couldn’t let go of it. It was the one activity I had that made me feel normal and alive and like I was still a part of the world.

(When you have cancer, you see, it seems like the entire world seems to keep going at it’s normal pace, while you are left behind. You cannot really live while undergoing chemo, you just try and exist. You try to make it from treatment to treatment. You try not to think too far ahead.)

Running requires a lot of breathing, of course, and since I couldn’t do that essential activity very well, it became a massive struggle. I spent a lot of time stopped on the side of the road or on the trail, bent over, grabbing my knees, wondering if my heart was going to leap out of my throat onto the ground in front of me. I looked — and felt — like a poser. I was just pretending to be a runner. I was once a runner. I wasn’t one now. I seriously wondered if I would ever be able to run again. All I could do now was jog at a ridiculously slow pace for a few minutes, then gasp for breath on the side of the trail.

For whatever reason, one morning during this dark phase. I decided I’d run for forty minutes — an easy amount for me. Twenty minutes out, twenty minutes back. Four miles or so. Give or take. Easy. No pressure. I’d done it a million times. Two minutes into the run, I was in trouble. My chest hurt, I was breathing heavily. So I slowed down. It felt like someone had put a very large stone on my chest. I slowed down some more. The entire right side of my chest burned every time I inhaled. It felt like I was sucking in volcanic air. I stumbled to a stop. It felt as though I had a spear stuck in the right side of my chest. I knelt on one knee, the other firmly planted on the dirt. I coughed and drops of crimson congealed into a black puddle in the dirt of my trail next to my left knee. The coughing released the pressure in my chest; I felt better.

Cancer had brought me literally to my knees.

Every time I pass that spot on the trail, my stomach tightens a little. It is a constant reminder of how bad things were. But it is also a reminder of how far I have come.

I refused to give up. The next day, stubborn as always, I was back out again on my trail, jogging a few yards, walking a few, jogging, walking, jogging. Although I had some pretty poor runs after that, I never coughed up blood again. Soon after that incident, my lungs started to heal from the Bleo assault, and I was able to start really running again. My pace gradually improved. The number of chemo treatments dwindled into the single digits. Then I could count them on one hand.

I finished chemo in September. Within a few weeks of chemo ending, I noticed that I was running fast and it felt easy. I also noticed that my trail started to change again. Now the days were getting noticeably shorter, the angle of the sun was changing, becoming lower in the sky. And soon my trail blossomed into a sea of bright golds and fiery crimsons. It was so beautiful, that it would take your breath away to see it. No picture, no poet could do it proper justice.

The trees gallantly held onto their brilliant leaves for a long time, but not long ago the wind knocked most of them down. Now the trail is dull, brown and gray. It gets dark very early. Daylight is at a premium. But although it may not be as beautiful as it is in other seasons, I still love it.

I’m back running the volume I was running when I was diagnosed. I feel strong as I fly down my favorite trail. I no longer struggle to shuffle down the path, I no longer have to stop every few yards to gasp. I run with my head up, confident.

I say I love to run … and I do. I guess it is funny to say you love to run. Enjoying this sport, running. Non-runners think runners are crazy. Insane. Those who don’t run, do not understand. They view running as punishment. Runners know this. We take a sort of twisted pride in the joke that our sport is every other sport’s punishment.

And at times, I admit, running seems like punishment. Some days, even the most dedicated among our tribe do not want to run. We usually do so anyway. Runners tend to be committed. To running, if nothing else. We will run laps around a parking lot if we have no other option. Or in place on a treadmill. In the driving rain. In the ice and snow. I’ll admit that there is a physically painful aspect to this sport: that hot, burning sensation in your lungs as you finish a hard 5K or stagger to the crest of a big hill, that overwhelming heaviness in your legs as the lactic acid builds up at the end of a hard track workout.

This is what non-runners think of running as. We know better. Oh sure. We know it is sometimes painful, that there are bad days. But then there are those glorious days, when you feel like you could run forever …

Oh, how I do love running. I love the feel of the wind in my hair, the steadiness of my breathing. The dull thud of running shoes against the packed dirt, the crunch of gravel. The occasional wildlife sightings, the ability to withdraw into one’s self. I love how the running endorphins enhance my senses and how I feel so alive at the end of a run. Running is freedom.

And yet I know this could all change; the cancer could come back. Every cancer survivor lives with this fear in the back of their mind. Relapse dangles over our heads like the Sword of Damocles. You try to drown it out with other activities and thoughts, but it is always there. But while that incessant whisper is part curse, it is also part blessing. I once took running for granted as something that would always be there. Now I know it can’t be taken for granted.

To me, I think the worst possible fate would be to arrive at the end of your life and to realize you have not lived. And that is why I love running: nothing makes me feel more alive. I hope I can run forever.

Every run is a gift. Run long, run strong.

rain rain go away

Yesterday morning was absolutely gorgeous — high 30s, bright sunshine — so it figured that today would be gray, dreary, and very wet.

I really don’t mind running in the rain, but I don’t exactly enjoy it. Especially when it is 39 degrees and raining. The only saving grace today was that it was a kind of misty, light rain rather than a driving downpour.

Since I was going to be miserable anyway, I did my most miserable route, the middle distance one with several big hills in and out of the Valley.

I figure if you have to be miserable, might as well be miserable overall. Right?

At least my feet managed to somehow stay pretty dry.  That was a big plus.  I hate soaking wet feet and sopping squishy wet running shoes.

a gray run

A gray run, brightened considerably by the chickadees.

November may be the most gray month of the year. It seems like the sun never shines during November. Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but still. One starts to run out of ways to describe the color of the sky: battleship, steel, iron, sooty, silver, ashen, dismal, smoky, powdered, leaden .. all synonyms or adjectives to describe that extremely dull color: gray.

The trees turned late here this year; some of them are desperately hanging onto their burnished golds and fiery scarlets, but most of the leaves are now on the ground. The decaying leaves give the air a certain earthy fragrance. They make a soft carpet to run on, even adding cushioning to the hardest concrete sidewalks. It is a slippery carpet, though.

Given the lack of foliage and the grayness, I suppose you could say this is one of the most ugly times of the year. Everything seems so dull and dead and dirty. It’s also often quite cold.

Not today, though.

I go running nearly every single day. Sometimes I run and I forget that I am running and suddenly realize I’m a lot further along than I thought. Other days are a struggle, though I almost always feel better for having run. Still other days I seem hyper aware of my surroundings; I become extra aware of every tiny little detail: from the wildlife to the mottled green, gold, and red colors on the leaves under my feet. It’s not just sight either, but the smells — the wafting scent of breakfast or burning leaves or a fireplace. And sound — the crunch of gravel underfoot, the soft padding over the leaves, the squish and squeak of a well worn pair of running shoes, the sound of cars and the wind whistling past my ears.

I ran down by the lake today. The lake is just as gray as the sky. It was unseasonably warm — 60ish — and as a result I broke a pretty good sweat. The air was thick like a warm, wet blanket and the wind was gusting out of the south-southwest. It made the way out a little harder than the way back which is much more sheltered from the wind. The waves from the lake lapped gently against the pale sand. The white water gradually crawls forward, then as if an unseen giant was pulling a string, the waves pull backwards.

I saw a few birds. A red-bellied woodpecker clung on the side of an old oak tree. Woodpeckers don’t like to be spotted. They are shy and elusive. I’ve learned that at Gettysburg, “pursuing” the gorgeous red-headed variety. The red-headed woodpecker is common in the woods between the Virginia and North Carolina monuments where the road dips down and then rises up again. I also see them quite often at the Loop near the Wheatfield. And I spotted quite a gathering of these blue-black, white, and red stunning avians in the large old witness tree at Devil’s Den. They don’t like for you to know where they are, and if they sense you’re watching them, they will take off, progressively higher and higher into the trees. Anything to escape the prying human eyes.

The chickadees are much more friendly. They are tiny balls of feathers and fluff with bright black eyes that sport a distinctive shiny black cap and bib, with a contrasting paintbrush strip of white over their eyes. Their eyes are like tiny black stars glinting out from the snowy white surrounding feathers. The back of a chickadee is a gray (but it’s a warm gray) and their bellies a very soft, chestnut-golden brown, not unlike some of the strands that pepper my hair. The chickadees hop happily back and forth at the many bird feeders along my route. I also sometimes spot them curiously and cheerfully peeking out from an evergreen bush: tiny tufts of gold, brown, gray, black, and white.

What I like most about the chickadees is for such a delicate bird, they are actually very hardy. I see them out even in the worst weather. In that way, I suppose they are kind of like runners. They also always seem so cheerful, no matter what the weather. They don’t seem to mind the gray.

I saw a few other birds. A hold-over robin with dull-colored plumage, a few large white seagulls. And innumerable house sparrows, as always. Several coal black crows were perched high in a buckeye tree. They were engaged in cawing at a set of crows that had taken up a spot in another tall oak tree. I have always liked crows; they are smart and funny. I still smile at the thought of a very large, solitary crow crawling into a discarded bag from McDonald’s at college; the crow crawled into the wet and dirty bag and emerged triumphant with a piece of half-eaten hamburger. The crow enjoyed that hamburger as we would enjoy a piece of fillet mignon.

I saw many squirrels too. The squirrels are incredibly busy this time of year, gathering nuts and acorns for the coming winter. They were moving a bit faster than usual today.

I think the red furry squirrels are moving a lot today because they do not need the Weather Channel to tell them that the weather is changing. The northern sky is no longer gray but is now like a fresh bruise: dark, purple, angry. The wind is picking up more, and it is starting to rain. Tomorrow it is supposed to snow.

If I run tomorrow (I feel as though I could use a day off), I’ll be looking for the squirrels and woodpeckers and chickadees. It’s amazing what’s there when you take the time to look.

more fall running pics

Autumn Running Pictures

In the interest of inspiring trail envy, here are some pictures from my running trail this week. Enjoy!

Jealous??? Now you understand why I run so much and enjoy running so much. :)

strafed by a pterordacyl

Strafed by a pterordacyl while running this morning.

Ok, not really.

But for a long moment it seemed as though it were so.

I was heading back to the car at the end of a 15-mile run through the Rocky River and Mill Stream Reservations. My route takes me along the Rocky River. It’s a good run, fairly flat except for a big hill near Berea Falls. Other than that just enough rolls to keep muscle boredom at bay. It’s all on an asphalt trail that often winds away from the road. It is nice to run in a car-free zone and the only thing to dodge is recreational cyclists and walkers. I cross the river several times on this route, sometimes over a bridge, other times over a ford, still others over old wooden trestle foot-bridges.

It was a sunny, gorgeous morning. The trees are just starting to turn. Maybe just a touch too warm to be running 15 miles. It was 58 degrees when I started out.

(Left to my own devices, I like to run in the high 40s to low 50s ideally.)

As I came back across the big road bridge over the Rocky River my eyes focused on a shadow in front of me. It had the shape and size to be a pterodactyl. What is THAT? Whatever it was, it also was making some sort of strange sound — think a goose with laryngitis on steroids. I quickly and instinctively ducked my head. Eons of flight or fight took over; adrenaline rushed and I think my body was quite prepared to suddenly bolt at a full sprint, despite having just run 14.75 miles. Fortunately, it was not a flying reptile from millions of years ago and fortunately although he was flying very low his long trailing legs didn’t brush my head. It was actually one of the many great blue herons that stalk the river magnificently hunting little fish, frogs, and whatever else they eat. They stand about four-feet tall with a nearly six foot wingspan and are impressive in the air.

It just looked like a pterosaur.

I stopped to watch this large bird sail down and land in the river. I see these four-foot tall avian hunters in the river very often, but I’ve never had one swoop down over my head like that. It looked incredibly prehistoric — like something that did not quite belong in the 21st century.

(The largest of the pterosaurs actually had wingspans of up to 36 feet. The biggest was known as Quetzalcoatlus — it lived during the late Cretaceous period in Texas. Yes, I was one of those kids who loved dinosaurs. I thought a trip to the Natural History museum was very cool.)

take me out to the ball game

This post is off-topic, but I know at least a few of my readers also love the National Past-time.

Cleveland has been blessed by beautiful September weather. So when I had the chance to go to today’s game (a rare day game during the week; it was seniors day), I jumped at the opportunity. I wasn’t disappointed.

I even took a few pictures with my trusty, fit-in-my-pocket digital camera.

C.C. pitched a great game and the Indians basically closed the book on Detroit, winning 4-2. Casey Blake hit another homer. It was an exciting game down to the end with the Indians having to work their way out of a bases-loaded jam in the 8th inning. (They did it with no damage and the Jake was LOUD!)

Baseball has been the way I’ve marked time through chemo. I started during spring training, I’m set to finish just as the Indians should be clinching the Central Division. I get to enjoy the World Series unmolested.

Clockwise: Grady gets a hit; C.C. delivers some heat; an absolutely gorgeous day at the ballpark