tis the saison

As those of you who know me may recall, I generally term this time of year the "saison en enfer," because as we know "l'enfer, c'est les autres" and this is the time of the year when les autres become very prevalent in life. (my heartfelt apologies to messrs rimbaud et sartre).
I refer of course to the mindless, ineluctable, peristaltic season between halloween and new years, in which holidays and and work days and everything in between tends to coagulate into one grande mass of THINGS TO SEE, PEOPLE TO GET DONE, AND PLACES TO AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE.

Those of you who recall last year's saison en enfer, last years massive, all out attack on the holy day of thanksgiving, and last year's sickness and crap infused xmas greeting, will be relieved as all get out that i have put away a bit of the curmudgeonliness this year, and, can even be said to be coasting through the holidaze, if not merrily, then at least with some (at last) vague and fleeting, sense of well being.

I attribute this in part to my training regimen, because since I started attacking my VO2max with various extraordinarily painful bike workouts, I HAVE actually started to feel stronger. I also got my second triathlete magazine today, and am now psyched to try even more new things, like combining my swim and run days with water running and new and ever more excruciating bike workouts (wonder why all the torquemada-type coaches are BIKE coaches? must be the equipment focus...hmmm). So, come spring, I will be ready to dance merrily through those sprint tris, and maybe attempt an olympic at some point?? dunno. time will tell.

Work is still crapola. The only difference is that my 2 year contract is up in January and i've been asked to stay on. I have no desire to stay on, but it is nice to be asked. I was feeling quite pressured before I got the word.

So I seem to be finally crawling out of the constantly exhausted feeling that marked my year of chemo and herceptin. It is weird because I started thinking that was normal. Now that I have some energy back, life isn't quite so draining.

I've decided to keep posting on CG until the end of the year, because I have to do my third annual "Year in Fears" recap post. After that, this blog will probably be put out to stud, er I mean pasture, and, if I blog at all, it will probably be back on good ole bloggrilla. Or I may launch a new, triathlon oriented blog.

at any rate, I hope those of u who still read me are enjoying your holidays. I plan to enjoy mine, even if that means camping out in front of my NEW 32 inch TV with a spinervals video and bike trainer...

(note: I do NOT look like this...)

well freakin finally...

Yes, I owe blogs. I know that vast scores of people are waiting for my tri report, and my scan report etc. etc. And i guess i have to say that i may well be putting Cancer Grrl to bed with this post. Today, ominously, i asked my boss for an extension on some work due and, for the first time, he sighed. Well if that ain't the writing on the wall i don't know what is. Don't you see it? Cancer Grrl can NO LONGER PLAY THE CANCER CARD AT WORK.

Cancer Grrl's hair is long enough and thick enough to keep her head warm, and blond enough to preclude dumping vast amounts of cancer-causing chemicals on it. Cancer Grrl no longer faints after a mere hour of training, and no longer requires 14 hours of sleep per night (as if she ever ONCE in this whole freakin ordeal, actually got 14 hours, or even 8 for that matter...grrrr). Cancer Grrl no longer can blame every ache, pain, attention lapse or excessive tardiness on chemo, herceptin or cancer.

So, folks, i bleve this means that Cancer Grrl is retired. I mean, there will always be a cancer grrl, b/c once you have dis disease, you is one of the chosen forever haha. BUT! Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, like the unsinkable Molly Brown, like that Armstrong man, I is back and I is better.

So now, on to the tri report. what i can remember is this:

The tri was the Lake Compounce Tri for Cancer. It was in Connecticut, at a very weird theme park. In fact, to get from the transition area to the lake, one was forced to run past a lot of those weird, plaster cast scenes filled with fantasy figures. I believe we ran past a graveyard with zombies and some sort of santa's village themed scene of cheery red cheeked, pointy eared folk. This could have been oxygen deprivation on my part.

The morning was cold. I and the bf biked from the motel to the theme park. I was fine, but the bf, who lacks my obsessive foresight, neglected to bring a tri bag, and nearly wiped out on his bike due to trying to carry a suitcase whilst riding. bad move bf! Listen to CG next time.

We donned wetsuits in the transition area. Right away I knew I was outclassed mightily. The man who racked his bike opposite mine had done ironmans. His bike must have weighed as much as a loaf of bread, wonder bread at that. The two men next to me had more testosterone between them than the entire IMF. The man immediately to my right was probably half my age. And let's not discuss the women. I saw more sinews and teeth than alien3 and sigourney weaver put together, and more muscle than the men. A fair and robust lot of lasses to be sure.

I was a bit intimidated. And nervous. But since I walk through life intimidated and nervous, I was rather prepared for these feelings. I made my way to the lake to test the waters.

The water was not so cold, and I started to relax. I put on my white cap and waited for the beginner wave. There were only 200 peeps in this race, 135 of them were old timers and 65 of us were newbies. We newbies went second.

Into the water. Ah. I was swimming, I was being kicked, I was calm, I was swimming. I was fine. I was slapped. This was ok. This was a breeze. I was gliding along. I was rounding the first buoy. All of a sudden, mid breath, i realized that i was really dizzy. I mean really. The sky was swirling. This panicked me a bit. As a land animal, a human in the water who suddenly feels as though she is passing out will panic. This human panicked for a second or three. Then, she got on with it. I went on my back and started doing backstroke. Yes, I swam over people. yes I got off track. yes I kept going. I rounded the second buoy. I was headed for home. I attempted the crawl again, but could not get a rhythm or breath going. No matter, I'm good at back crawl. I'm actually faster at back crawl than front (or, to put it more precisely, I am less slow). Finally, beach in sight, I flipped back over and finished with front crawl.

I got out of the water, kinda dazed, and still a bit unnerved. I offer this insight as a serious aside to anyone who is interested in doing tris, TRIS ARE MENTAL. What I mean is that my mind was suddenly off. My focus was off and I could feel it, because I'd been freaked by the dizziness in the water. I didn't regain that focus during the rest of the event, and my performance suffered.

At any rate, I got on the bike. The one cool thing was that I had beaten the testosterone twins on the swim. Tee hee. Score one for chemopause. My bike race was uneventful. The course was two loops, with only one sorta hilly part (which, of course, you saw twice). It was pretty. It was not difficult, but I went out too fast and lost steam rather quickly. My bike time was not wonderful, but i still managed to pull ahead of quite a few non-newbies. I did begin to talk to myself at the end. I did not utter inspiring, self-affirming chatter either. At one point I turned a corner and stated, out loud, to no one in particular, "This is a particularly unpleasant deja vu". At another point, I and my aspergian brain got a good chuckle over a road name. Shouldn't I be saying things like "you can do it!" "Fast and strong!" and "you're a winner!" ??

Which brings us to the run. The run was not a stellar performance either. There was a big hill. A man I had trounced in the bike part came up behind me and said "Oh comeon kiddo you can do better than that!" as he breezed past. One of the T. Twins passed me. Worse, I had no desire to catch them. Or rather, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. My legs felt like all the atoms in them had been replaced by neutrinos. In less fanciful parlance: they felt like lead.

Nonetheless, CG ran. she may have walked a step or two here and there, but by and large, she ran. She may not have made as good a time as she'd have liked, but she did not wet her pants, injure her arthritic knees, or seriously embarrass herself by coming in after the 70 year old lady who was walking the run part. And the interesting thing is, about halfway through, I thought of Honey, and of Moon. Yes, I decided to run it for them. And my flat footed step did get a little bit lighter...

For his part, the BF nearly drowned and got a flat, but finished the tri euphoric and addicted.

And thus, before one could turn around, it was over. And I am also still addicted. Springtime will bring more tris I'm sure, I may even do this one again. I have to, because now I cannot remember the funny name of that road.

My stats? Slightly worse than Danskin, but not by much. I was most disappointed in my bike stats, which should have been a lot better. Swimming, ok, i'll probably never be that good. Running, I have knee issues, so my days of any real swiftness are probably gone. But biking? Now I KNOW I can get faster on the bike. And I have a whole winter to do so...

tri report

The triathlon is done! It was easier and harder than expected (easier in the swim, harder in the bike and run), I was faster than I thought (in the run), and I actually felt better physically after the tri than I did after either of my two (last years) running races.

Also, I came out close to the top quarter of all racers, combining all times and my transition times. I mean, I'll take that! This wasn't near as bad as I thought I would be.

Of course my slowest time was in the swim event. Nonetheless, the wetsuit helped enormously. I didn't get super tired, although I did find myself swimming the long way round, because I kept forgetting to sight. It was darkish and foggy too. I was looking at minnows and fronds for a while, then i realized that all the flailing human bodies were headed a different way. Ah me. At any rate, it was over soon enough and I rose out of the water like the swamp thang, peeled off my neoprene carapace and donned biker chic.

At first I was elated to get out of the water and onto my bike, where I really do feel most at home. I started to fly...WHEEEEEE!!! I started to feel like I was just going to kick ASS. WHEEEEEE! ...
and then WHEEEEE gradually turned to "f**k. F**K. HOLY F**KING SH*T!" There were hills. LOTS of hills. Hills throughout the WHOLE course. And these were steepish hills. LONG hills. Short stocky fat hills that came one after another in an annoying steplike fashion. Hills with smaller hills on their peaks like massive pimples on a nose. I could not believe it. Later, I looked at the website, which actually described the course as "challenging". Why, thank you. I was not expecting challenging for this baby tri. Nonetheless. I persevered. However, I forgot that I was to hold back some mojo for the run. Also, my race number flew off my bike at one point, and I, like a stupid dummy, went back to get it. As I picked it up, someone whipped past me saying "oh you don't need that..." haha. But I am so damned anal that i held onto it for the rest of the ride. My pace was average of 16mph overall. This is no tour de france-type pace, but, hey, for me, on hills, it was ok.

Then, I had a surprisingly good pace on the running portion (8:18 min mile, which is also no elite pace, but is a good pace for me). This was amazing, because i was trying to run slow, just so that i wouldn't have to give up and walk, because, as already stated, I had sorta blown my wad on the bicycle portion. Running after biking did not feel good, despite the fact that in the gym, it often does. But then, in the gym, my bike training is usually pretty half assed, and the treadmill soft and forgiving... Here, my legs felt like they were slamming the pavement hard with every step. I tried to consciously make my footfall softer, but it wasn't easy... Additionally, at the beginning, someone handed me a packet of sports beans which i clutched the entire time, wanting to eat them, but not really knowing how to do it in a non-spastic manner. Thus, i did both the bike and run holding on to unnecessary objects. I suppose that is good training for wartime or something. I dunno.

I did my transitions in a leisurely and calm fashion. Since I used to perform in some rather prop-heavy shows, I am good at setting up my props and keeping that part of things together. I did not feel like rushing, especially since I was more interested in my separate times for each event than my overall time. Nonetheless, in looking at my stats, it would behoove me to shave a bit off those times...I mean, I could have had a light luncheon in the time it took to get from swimming to biking...

I've decided i am a fan of the triathlon. It has something for everyone. Enough physical punishment for the masochist, enough gear for the gear head, enough planning and lists and setting up for the obsessive compulsive, enough exercise for the fitness minded, enough of a "pack" for the social, and enough autonomy for us loners (after they call your swim wave, you are really on your own for the rest of the race, you basically make up your own schedule...)

I spose I'll have to get that swim time up, tho. If my swim percentile had matched my bike and run percentiles, I'd have done a lot better stat wise. Ah well. Maybe I'll just buy a better wetsuit...

Tri-not: Part 3: "the wet suit"

And so, today's installment of cancer grrl's tri-ing tales has her tri-ing to rent a wetsuit. It is appropriately entitled "Tri-umph of the Silly,"* or: "Sexual Dimorphism Through the Eyes of Young Triathletes..."

And the moral of today's tale is: Be ye not so silly as to attempt to rent a wetsuit in NYC a week before the tri.

Today, cancer grrl, after blithely enjoying a morning free of work worries (she is on VACATION!), and, after thoughtfully scrubbing the tub and laconically rinsing out workout clothing, ventured into the man of hattans (manhattan, for those of you unused to CG's continuing compulsion to dissect and/or backwardsify words), to rent a wetsuit.

Yesterday's delightful romp in the frothy briney (see Tri-not: Part 2) convinced CG that a wetsuit was this year's most necessary tri accessory. Why? well, those that know, tell you that the wetsuit keeps you warm, AND buoyant! Since I tend to be both hypothermic, and prone to sink like a stone, the wetsuit is a must-have for me.

However, again, pardon my stupidity, but, how was I to know that you had to rent these things eons before the actual tri? The answer to that is that I should have known. Anyone who has lived in NYC for as long as I have should know that the odds of desired/necessary object "A" being available when you desire/need it for event "B" decrease exponentially the closer you get to event B, given the high probability "C" that someone else exactly your height and weight and sex will come to the store that very morning to rent the last one of "A", and in all likelihood, will rent it exactly for your event "B". (The damned slut.)

Anyway. The day dawned cold and wet, in complete contrast to yesterday. I went to the store to rent my wetsuit. The man on the phone took my height and weight, and assured me that there were suits available in my size, a women's "medium".

However, when I arrived at said store, the damned slut who has my body had rented MY wetsuit for the very same time period that I would need it. There were no more suits in my size and sex.

I was desperate. What could I do? I asked for a men's small. And I tried it on, much to the amusement of the extremely young man waiting on me, who attempted, blushingly, to explain the difference in men's and women's bodies, which is apparently reflected in wetsuits. Therefore, he patiently instructed, the men's suit's crotch would sag and its chest would bind.

Haha. I had to laugh. I got the sucker on, although I almost gnawed my leg off in the process. The crotch was fine and the bust was fine. The SHOULDERS felt tight. Ah me. I did not wish to tell the young lad that he needn't worry about my secondary sex characteristics, because cancer and surgery took care of pretty much all of them, thank you very much. So I rented the suit. It is not optimum, but I am as comfortable in it as I can be, given that I'm not a fan of tight neoprene by any stretch of the imaginiation (sorry, hadda do it).

Now I have my suit, and will not drown. It would be good if I could practice in it, but, alas, this is not a perfect world, and will not be a perfect tri.

Thus spake Cancer Grrl.

*I recently viewed leni riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the nazi propaganda film. It is a lovely film, capturing the nazi party "summer of love", and merry ole adolph h. doing his best to smile at the (aryan) children filling their puffy cheeks with certified fatherland-grown produce. Although riefenstahl goes out of her way to capture young, healthy germans, eating, washing, exercising and drilling (militarily of course) happily in the eternal sun of the third blight, and how inspiring it all is, all i could really think about was the monty python "Funniest Joke" sketch. "My dog has no nose! How does he smell! Awful!" Anyway, there's no way to view this movie without the perspective hindsight gives, so I'm not even going to attempt to say anything intelligent about it. See it for yourself.

But, see Olympia too. It is slighly less propaganda ridden, and worth it to see Jesse Owens kick butt.

Tri-Not: Part 2

Welcome to the continuing saga of my lighthearted and parsifal-like romp through the world of triathlons. This particular segment is titled, appropriately: "Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread." In case you wonder about my role in this story, I can safely tell you that I'm no angel.

As our heroine approaches the eponymous tri, she begins to quail a bit about the swim. Each piece of sage tri-wisdom and real athlete advice to newbies holds that it is important, imperative, and perhaps even completely absolutely necessary to practice an open water swim before you do an open water tri.

so, it was with some small trepidation, but no real knowledge, that I, on the sunny summer sunday that was yesterday, hooked up with these people for one of their more "relaxed" open water swims.

Ok. I mean. I had no idea.

"These people" were CHANNEL SWIMMERS, (and i'm talkin English Channel, not HDTV), ALCATRAZ SWIMMERS, etc. These people swim a mile in the time it takes me to swim 10 lengths at the local Y pool. These people were going to swim a leisurely 4 miles that very morning.

I told them in no uncertain terms that I would be swimming maximum 1/2 mile. They told me the direction, and where to sight. They told me that a white building some ways off was the 1/2 mile turnaround point. I said OK. Then I got in with them. And that is the last I saw of them (til they regaled each other later with speeds and distances, as I crept back to the starting lifeguard chair to recover my belongings).

And the white building? Damned building was the white whale, and I was Ahab. Damned building mocked me. Damned building backed away from me like a blissful dream receding as you climb out of morpheus's tender embrace, leaving nothing but an imprint on your yearning mind.

Well, I was not scared at all. Nor panicked. Rather i had this odd feeling that I was the butt of some huge joke. Like, uh, was I headed the wrong way? Was the pier actually a moveable painted backdrop? They were kidding about the white building, weren't they? And further, what actually happened to my stroke (never very good, but certainly not this bird-in-a-dirt bath flutter and flop)?

I flipped onto my back. I pondered the fractals made in the water by my spastic limb-fluttering. I pondered the brown water and its unpleasant temperature. I swallowed some, purely experimentally, I assure you, and discovered that, yes, indeed, it was coney island sea water. I flipped onto my side. My butt and legs grew even heavier. I looked at the pier. It was no closer. I attempted some freestyle again, but, for the love of pete I could not for the life of me get the rhythm. I reasoned that I had two choices: either i continue freestyle and forget about breathing, or I do something else. I chose to execute my flailing version of the backstroke for a few minutes more.

And the white building? White building be damned. There would be no white building for me today.

When I got about 20 feet away from the pier, I decided I had had enough. I could not freestyle at all. I headed in. I checked my distance. Yes folks, cancer grrl, our perhaps a touch overconfident tri-newbie, managed about a 150 yard swim. Next saturday, she is to swim 820 yards, and then bike and run.

(insert laugh track, as clown takes a bow)

Well. I got out, slogged landlubberishly and sheepishly back to the starting chair, and told the lifeguard I had returned, lest they drag the surf for my body, probably still sporting a confused, disbelieving look on its face. Then, I defiantly put my running shoes on and lurched off for a much needed, soothing, ego calming, run on the boardwalk. THAT at least felt normal.

So, here's the moral of l'histoire, and the point where I get to add to tri-wisdom: Do not worry grasshoppper. There will always be someone worse trained than you are. In fact, if your tri is next weekend... that someone may well be me.

How not to do a triathlon

My training regimen for this triathlon is pretty bad. I didn't really start doing swim workouts until last week, (tri is on July 29), and basically, my swim workouts consist of a few laps of an aptly-named-in-my-case "crawl" that is so slow that I am regularly lapped by old ladies weighing 300 pounds and wearing flowered shower caps in order to keep their hair dry (they don't put their heads under water).

My bike workouts consist of a few miles of FLAT roads, and some half-hearted hill attempts at the stationary bike at the gym, the one that says it isn't out-of-order, but which still regularly tells me that my heart rate is either 55 bpm or 300. Extrapolating its accuracy in bpm to its elevation accuracy, i am either climbing the matterhorn or actually coasting pretty smoothly downhill at any given "hill climbing" moment.

And running...well, in my case it is really better described as "jogging", or perhaps "hobbling." In fact, I sometimes have to check to see whether I am actually jumping rope instead of running, because i seem to stay pretty much in the same place for long periods of time. And here I thought running was supposed to move you forward.

Trouble is, I don't look sick, cancer-thin, or out of shape. I look athletic. Thus, it's kinda embarrassing because people expect me to be able to do stuff. I'd much rather look like i'm on my last legs and then blow the competition out of the water, than look like I know what I'm doing and then turn out to be slower than the #1 train on the weekends.


Nonetheless, I am mentally as game as a young racehorse, although I may be physically more like something fossilized and reconstructed for the eddification of paleontologists....

five boro bike tour photos

the start: it was insanely crowded




On top of queensboro bridge. The police and an ambulance stopped us there for about 20 minutes. I think someone got ill. It was freezing cold...



Finally, some space to move. This was on the BQE, headed towards Verrazano Bridge...

tour de pomme

bike tour done! It was quite fun, although colder, way more crowded, and certainly windier than I would have liked. Wind damned near blew me off the queensboro and verrazano bridges.

It was also majorly crowded. I knew it would be, but I had no idea. It was really really slow, stop and go riding until we got to central park, and then it was open enough to start speeding up a bit. By the time I hit queens, the road was pretty well opened up, and the ride from queens thru bklyn, down to the verrazano was open enough to bike hard when I wanted to, and ease off when I wanted to. It was nice. I had enough in me to spin up the bridge, although it was hard, because it's a mile or so of incline, and can be daunting after biking 40 miles. But, I made decent time. My legendary bridge phobia helped out by making me terribly uncomfortable to be on the bridges any longer than necessary. So i tended to concentrate on getting over them quickly...

all in all, I had a good time, and learned a lot about maneuvering bikes in extremely crowded conditions, and about drafting off of the person in front of me. AND about how nice it feels to suddenly have an open road in front of you and nothing to stop you from just biking...until the next rest stop...

a day at the races

well this is a bit belated, but here are some race pix from Austin...





Yes I was all chemo huffed & puffed. note the bald head and wobbly looking knees...

live, but maybe not so strong...

Ok, well here is is, cancer grrl's livestrong challenge race report.

Initially, I must tell you that the 5K portion of this festival of athletic events ranks at the very bottom in terms of mileage, considering the challenge offers bike rides of 100, 70 and 40 miles, and a 10K run...

...And then there is the 5K run (or walk, because the walkers were on the same out and back 5K route)...





HOWEVER, and it is a big however, That eponymous Armstrong Man himself ran the 5K event, lest we be seen as a field of couchified slackers. He did manage to beat me, but the BF was neck to neck with him for a brief instant...the only thing was, the BF was on the beginning leg of the out and back run and That Armstrong Man was on the ending leg...whoops, two ships en passant....).

Secondly, and I must kvetch about this, as any good New Yorker would: they started the damned events at the damned crack of sparrow fart...7:30 a.m.. Helluva uncivilized time for a race, but then, that's Texas, as any good Texan can tell u. And since I qualify as both, I may be listened to with some authority.

Thirdly, the race was run in the boonies, and contained some rather unexpected, and, dare I say it, unwelcome, HILLS.

That said, here was my race:
I started out thinking I would pace slowly, but was soon passing people left and right. Why? Because it wasn't crowded enough for me to know enough to hold back and cruise for the first part, and I'm such a neophyte I don't know how how to pace myself BY myself. So I was going at a fair clip, for cancer grrl anyway. Then, i, rather foolishly, bounded up the first loooooong hill in a fit of showoffyness.

As I hit the halfway mark, I knew I was in trouble. I was freakin tired already. That was when The Child started passing me. The Child was about 8 yrs old, small and fast, with a ridiculous amount of energy. I'd catch up to him, and, frightened lest some old bald witch beat him, he'd take off sprinting. I'd plod, and catch up to him again, and the same thing happened over and over.

At the halfway mark, I also, in a rather desperate show of "i'm a real runner, not the crippled toxin surfer you see before you" grabbed a cup of Powerade, and, in trying to drink it, promptly and spastically upended it all over my white, clean, livestrong shirt. At least it was pink, and matched my Komen cap.

Coming back up the second half of the course I was met with not one, not two, but THREE freakin long hills. Here is where I started the cycle of walk 20 seconds, run up a hill, walk 20 seconds, run up a hill...I walked THREE times, sad to say. Here is where The Child finally bid me adieu and sailed on home as I ate his dust. Here is where I, being cheered on by some walkers who were coming down the first half, had to stop for a walk break right in front of them, mid cheer. Oh me, the humiliation.

Nonetheless, i finally managed to get it together and run home. AND I made better time than at Komen, even with the walks. (I ran about 27:38. I say about because I decided not to do the chip and I timed myself, because i didn't want the "pressure" of a chip...what EVAH). AND I did seem to be, oddly enough, somewhat towards the front of the field. But, since The Child was ahead of me, you probably have an idea of what the field was like...

But, i was beat. And at least I know now what it's like to run a 5K without thousands of people bobbing around you, giving you energy. And, at least I know I've got nowhere to go but up....

Austin Powers

So I'm here in Austin Tx, home of squadrons of bats, round, friendly turtles, herons both blue and night, and the livestrong challenge. Since I was doing the Komen run, I didn't hit people up for donations to livestrong, but, i'm down here to run another 5k, this time in 90 degree heat (but, let's be fair, no hills, and, hey, no humidity...). So if any random stalkers, um, i mean lurkers, to this site wish to guarantee entry into at least the presence of whoever decides where you go after your final huff, scratch & rattle, please donate now. meo te absolvum (heh).

It is nice here, and i had a great run this a.m., along town "lake" which is actually a river. I saw all the aforementioned animals along the river, plus some very friendly feral felines, with big fluffy tails, who lured me off the trail and into some shaky looking back trails complete with rubble, derelict refuse piles, and vast, open-mawed, sewage seeping, pipes.

The ferals did not rob me, but looked at me inquisitively, and i'm sure accusatorily, knowing as they must, that i left my precious feline children at home (in the care of cat sitters and their granddaddy of course). They also caused a minor hallucination: as I ran, i looked over at a hanging branch of dead leaves and the way it was arranged looked like a small, pert, cheetah sitting on a lawn. It was not a cheetah however. Yet, I took comfort in the fact that on my run, I, the weak and crippled bald chemo toxin surfer that I am, was outpacing a bunch of folks. The cheetah's spirit musta done it. hope he does some overtime on sundays at the race.

komen race report

well, I raced for da cure, along with 20,000 other people, and, I gotta tell you, I was the only freakin BALD person I saw. What is UP with that?

Anyway, the run was fun. We got there early, and there was a disco warm up of sorts on the 72nd street transverse which was kinda cool. The race itself was packed, and we started on 77th st & central park west, headed up to 90th street and cut into the park, where we ran down to 59th street, over, and back up to 72nd street. I ran with the Ex, and, after we got free of the crush of people, we went at a decent pace (well, between 9 & 9:30 min mile) for about 2 miles, because just running with so many other people was so hypnotic that I forgot to be tired for a while. I mean, it felt like the jog it was, not a run at all. Then, suddenly I got REALLY winded at 59th street, on the curve going back up to 72nd, so I walked for about a minute, then started running again and was fine to the finish. I didn't want to take the walk break, and I think my exhaustion was mostly kinda this psychological overwhelmed thing, but, at any rate it didnt' take much out of our time. We ran the whole thing in about 30 minutes. So, crappy time for a real runner, but ok for chemo grrl and the Ex, who could have gone faster but wanted the glory of running with CHEMO GRRRL the bald celeb.

At the finish line, I was pulled over by the People With Cameras who made me say something, and asked me a bunch of questions like "how many years?" which, in some other contexts would mean, "how many years have ya been off da stuff?" or "how many years did you get?", but which inthis context means "how many years ago did you have DA DISEASE?" I spluttered something about how i was in middle of chemo and the woman asked me how i felt and I said "tired". I guess that wasn't the best answer, considering the guts and glory of the whole damn thing, but, sheeeyite man I just wanted to stretch and go hit the goody tents. Which we did.

There were lots of hugs and cheers, which, I think I'm immune to because of my years of being a performer, b/c i'm pretty jaded about such things. My only thought was, "could I have gone faster?" followed closely by "when do we eat?"

There were some men in pink tshirts too, proving that men actually get breast cancer. It was cool to see them there, it tempered the Lilith festival atmosphere of the whole thing. That and the fact that there were 2 giant, balloon-constructed, pink, i kid you not, phallus shapes dominating the stage where they handed out the awards. hmmm. am I the only one who noticed that? Maybe they are gonna use those for the next testicular cancer race....

Last chance to be worthy

That nagging "not so good" feeling puzzling you as you park your SUV, pack your 3 items of groceries in 3 plastic bags, eat your factory-farmed cruelty-heavy chicken from KFC? White liberal guilt got you down? Survivor guilt? Catholic, Jewish, secular humanist or lapsed Buddhist guilt? Wake up feeling irrelevant? A cog in the machine? A tool for the man?

ARE YOU JUST NOT WORTHY?

I CAN HELP!

yes folks, this is your last chance to do something real. Redeem yourself brothers and sisters, so that at the final gasp, when god or the guy at the crossroads or whoever does the last weighing, you'll have that one extra chip that knocks the scales towards heavenly redemption and glory.....

THIS IS your last chance to donate to my Komen Race for the Cure. And you KNOW whut cure I be talkin bout.

So, brethren and sestren, here's what I need you to do.
Go here, and click on "make a gift".

THEN: (and here is the important part)
GIVE MONEY, bucks, the long green, the elusive sponduliks, the filthy lucre.

Then:
sit back, relax, and enjoy that guilt free feeling....



(repeat as necessary...)

P.S. Those who have already entered the ranks of the saved need not give again. unless they want to...

Race for da Cure

No, no, not the 80s band (the Cure). I just registered for Komen's NY Race for the Cure to raise money for guess what? uh, um...pink ribbons give ya any clue? Yes, you got it. Race for the Cure raises money for bc research, education, etc.

I'll be amidst chemo by that time, but I think I will probably be able to run a 5K. If not, I'll run part of it and walk part of it. At any rate, it's a good thing.

Next stop: a triathalon...maybe this one, since we're into BC charity these days...