Jackson Free Press

Last January, I snuggled under a warm velour throw on my plump sunroom sofa, with junk food and remote within arm's reach. Dozing off, I congratulated myself on excellent "no-moving-except-to-switch-TV-channels" planning, oblivious to the 264.1 miles of walking ahead of me.

Shortly, osteoarthritis pain in my 64-year-old hips zapped my afternoon snooze. Gyrating into new positions only fertilized the legume-sized distraction into a gigantic relentless throb. "Where is the ibuprofen?" replaced "Do I need more cola?"

Irrationally, it came to me in a flash: Age was attacking my body. I would soon need a cane or walker. I would not be able to climb the stadium steps up to my regular seats at The Rock to watch the USM Golden Eagles play football. Oh, my God! Oh, this is very serious, indeed.

"The sky is falling. The sky is falling!" my inner Chicken Little squawked. I agreed.

Immersed in free-floating anxiety, Chicken Little and I bolted upright and began a silent body inventory. The water-skiing, high-jumping cheerleader, dance-'til-dawn woman had mysteriously disappeared into yesteryear's blur. Chicken Little perched up on the ottoman with the junk food and fidgeted.

"Change the subject," I thought, so I left my shattered cocoon to pick up the mail.

God has a sense of humor.

In the mail was a colorful brochure covered with happy, laughing people wearing purple, sleeveless jerseys with numbers on them and the words, "The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team-In-Training."

I laughed out loud and read the brochure. TNT, the world's largest endurance-sports-marathon training program, was inviting me to an informational meeting just up the road from my sofa.

Chicken Little stepped back, incredulous, and slammed the door behind her, as I thought, "Nothing to lose if I go to the meeting. I don't have to sign up for a race."

The Meeting
Travis Lee, slightly older than my oldest grandchild, opened the meeting at St. Dominic's Cancer Center and perfunctorily distributed registration forms, as if we were all there to actually register for a marathon. The Rock 'n' Roll Marathon or Half-Marathon in San Diego, Calif., on June 3, 2007 was one of several available to us. I recollected San Diego from 1985—quaint Spanish architecture surrounded by bay, mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

But I immediately struck the full marathon—26.2 miles—off my list. After all, I got a bit winded walking from the car to the meeting room. And despite Chicken Little's absence, I was uncomfortable with such casual talk about walking or running 13.1 miles. Chicken Little would never fit in with this crowd.

The fact that I hadn't walked much lately seemed no big deal to TNT; they assured me that their coaches and a weekly training schedule of incrementally increasing distances would prepare me to participate.

"Really!" I thought. "These guys have no idea how out of shape I am."

Yet, it sounded good that TNT would provide me with a Web site for raising the $3,900 minimum for participation; they would provide airfare, hotel, a before-race pasta party and an after-race victory party.

I seesawed. Then, several people spoke up. "Life changing!" and "You will never be the same!" were bantered about with passion and energy. The woman wearing a hat over what appeared to be hair loss from chemo treatments was talking about doing an event, in quiet defiance of her disease. A grandmother with a lymphoma-diagnosed grandson was committing to walk and raise money. Resolute, they were ready to walk and run and raise money to help find a cure for the very diseases that they had fought and were fighting.

An "Aha" hit me; I was a coward if I went home to my sofa while these people, many of them still battling disease, showed up to train and walk or run. And being a coward is high on my list of things not to be.

So in a mental fog, I signed the forms and wrote out my $50 registration check. Immediately, I felt an inexplicably overwhelming freedom and excitement.

Travis went around the room and asked each of us to say why we were participating and which marathon we had chosen.

When he got to me, I said, "I don't have any idea why I am doing this. I want to walk the half-marathon in San Diego." That summed up my total conscious understanding of the situation at that point.

An undercurrent of laughter filled with acceptance bounced about in the room. Someone gave me a knowing look and smiled.

"I like the people in this room," I thought. It seemed that they were applying for very important jobs, wanted them badly and would do whatever it took to get them. The can-do attitude was contagious.

"But where are my Saucony walking shoes?" I silently questioned. "Somewhere hidden in the back of my closet," I silently answered. I had the strangest sensation that I was backing off my sofa and stepping out on the road. Was I imagining it, or did my hips hurt a bit less?

Looking back, I know that my commitment was to become a part of something bigger than myself.

By joining TNT I became part of a project that would change my life and the lives of those I walked for. It was also an opportunity to salvage my physical self as fast as possible. No more Chicken Little.

The Training
The next day I pulled out my dusty sneakers and together, we hit Parham Bridges Park.

For half-marathon trainees like Belinda Mason (a 15-year lymphoma survivor who became my walking partner) and me, the training included walking three weekdays and on Saturdays. By April, we were walking four or five miles on weekdays and 10 miles on Saturdays.

My marathon training was a chain of colorful miles linked in unique shapes and forms, intertwined with new faces, full hearts and my changing body/self.

Some training highlights from my journal:

Our first group walk, Saturday, Jan. 27, Natchez Trace Craft Center, Ridgeland, 7 a.m., a BYOB event—Bring Your Own Breakfast—a post-training winter picnic complete with yoga on frigid grass. Fun! Cold! I wore long handles. Met A. and C. He just finished chemo.

The burst of a breathtaking gold and pink sunrise over the reservoir as we crossed the Pelahatchie Bridge at the outset of my first-ever eight-mile walk.

We swatted swirling mosquitoes and avoided oncoming traffic and passed sedate fishermen in boats strung along the bridge like fish on a chain.

My Sauconys dodged loaded Mack truck monsters at dawn on Highland Colony Parkway.

Matthew and Colin, my 13- and 14-year-old grandsons, pulled on their sneakers at 6 a.m., without a grumble, for an 8-mile walk with me around lazy, picturesque Grayton Beach, Fla., during our annual family Memorial Day gathering.

The Contributors
Friends, family and their friends and family contributed $5,187 to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through my Web site and by mail. Total contributions raised by all of the 3,000 TNTers in the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in San Diego: $12.5 Million.

The Race
My pavement-scarred Sauconys, Belinda and I boarded Southwest, along with other TNTers, bound for San Diego on June 1, 2007.

The pre-dawn race-day itinerary included a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 3:30 a.m.; joining other Mississippians in the hotel lobby at 4:15 a.m.; affixing a TNT "tattoo" to the back of my calf; and boarding a bus in the dark for Balboa Park. Trey Bourn, our coach, led us like little puppies through Balboa's ghostly trees toward the starting area and through the thousands of people silently moving about, stretching and standing in bathroom lines in front of the hundreds of Porta Potties.

Bonding, we snapped pictures, spoke our expectations, straightened straps, pulled up socks and re-laced shoes. We joked and laughed in a calm, subdued manner, amid the palpable sense of quiet strong expectancy. It was a sacred time.

We checked our belongings at UPS trucks lined up like one giant brown caterpillar.

The memories and spirits of 35 people in whose memory I walked accompanied me on the 13.1-mile walk in San Diego on June 3. I wrote the names of these special people—including my father, aunt and paternal grandmother, who all died of cancer—on colored ribbons that I twisted into a bouquet and pinned to my purple TNT race shirt.

I pinned the color photo of an honoree, Serenity Cerami Lane, a grandchild of a friend, to the back of my race jersey. She pushed me along during the race.

The runners moved out, and I lost sight of them. Belinda and I stood toward the back of some 17,864 racers, so we didn't cross the start line for more than ten minutes after the 6:30 a.m. gunshot split the air, but the chips affixed to our shoes timed our crossing it and the finish line.

Overcast skies, 60-degree temps and enormous energy greeted us at the start of the race; sun, heat and Trey escorted us across the finish line. At a faster pace than usual, we traversed Balboa Park, moving under high-rise condo balconies full of waving bathrobed people, sipping coffee. We passed the zoo. We mingled with Elvis impersonators and a strolling guitarist.

Well-wishers of every age and description and 26 rock 'n' roll bands lined the course.

Volunteers along the route served us paper cups of water and a bitter sports drink.

We proceeded through downtown, around the Padre's stadium, and then approached a stark mountain between miles 8 and 11 where ambulances crawled back and forth to pick up "droppers" and transport them to the med stations.

Belinda looked at me a half-mile ahead and said, "Jackie, we are going to have to push through this."

We split a sport nutrition bar and kept our pace up the mountain, passing a Mexican band in spiffy long-sleeved black wool pantsuits with red trim, strumming guitars and serenading us in Spanish.

The incline became more severe. We did not look up, for fear of losing our precious inertia. We calmly kept on keeping on—Chicken Little was ill and not in attendance.

After about an hour, we topped the mountain, but the course unexpectedly turned left, 90 degrees into a second, lesser, incline.

On the left curb, within touching distance of me, was a tall, thin, unwell looking man dressed in crisp grey and white, carrying a sign: "I am a 10-year lymphoma patient." He stuck out his hand and I mine, and we touched.

"I will see you next year," he said. I lost it. Huge tears swelled up and plopped down my cheeks. I let them fall.

Looking up, I saw the 20-kilometer sign (approximately 12.4 miles). The finish line was in smelling distance.

Belinda and I crossed it together, along with my contributors' honorees, their names on that ribbon bouquet held fast near my heart. Our time: 3:53:32–not bad, factoring in 3 or 4 lengthy stand-in-line bathroom breaks.

With a heavy half-marathon metal on a red ribbon around my neck, I realized that my feet hurt and my body was tired, but, ironically, the unrelenting hip pain that had launched this walk from my sofa was a non-entity.

Post Script
I retired my reliable Sauconys and bought a new pair. I have morphed from a happy, flabby couch potato into a happy, somewhat less flabby, comfortable longer-distance walker.

Osteoarthritis and I have a different relationship. I try to keep moving enough to keep him off balance.

Chicken Little and I are estranged.

For information on joining the Team in Training to run or walk a marathon or half-marathon to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in Mississippi, contact the LLS Office in Ridgeland, at 601-956-7447.

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Previous Comments

ID

82087

Comment

On the left curb, within touching distance of me, was a tall, thin, unwell looking man dressed in crisp grey and white, carrying a sign: “I am a 10-year lymphoma patient.” He stuck out his hand and I mine, and we touched. “I will see you next year,” he said. I lost it. Huge tears swelled up and plopped down my cheeks. I let them fall. That's so touching! [img]http://clicksmilies.com/s1106/traurig/sad-smiley-019.gif[/img]

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2007-10-10T20:49:53-06:00

ID

82088

Comment

Thanks, L.W., for the feedback. I will never forget the fellow or the experience. Jackie

Author

J.T.

Date

2007-10-10T21:21:17-06:00

ID

82089

Comment

Way to go Jackie!!! You're soooo goood.....Al

Author

Al

Date

2007-10-11T18:53:05-06:00

ID

82090

Comment

Al, thanks so much for your post and kind words. Jackie

Author

J.T.

Date

2007-10-11T20:01:42-06:00

ID

82091

Comment

Jackie, An amazing story! Have you thought of taking up creative writing professionally? Love, Peter

Author

Grumbler

Date

2007-10-17T14:46:26-06:00

ID

82092

Comment

Thanks, Peter. Glad you enjoyed the piece. Thanks for your encouraging words. Jackie

Author

J.T.

Date

2007-10-19T21:30:43-06:00