Greetings from cool and rainy Nova Scotia!
Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July, and that you enjoyed your "free" run on Saturday. I can assure you that I did. It is lovely and cool here north of the 49th parallel... and I ran my 6 miles by the ocean, following the coastline along the Aspotogan Peninsula. Better still, I ran it with my mother.
My mom and I started running together in 1999, when her mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer. In October of that year, we signed up to run the CIBC 5km Run For A Cure, which is a Canadian nation-wide fundraiser and awareness-raiser... It was our first 5km race, and we had hardly trained for it... but we were both fairly fit and felt we could do it. We were huffing and puffing but otherwise feeling pretty good as we came around the final bend in the road, but as we approached the finish line she almost collapsed. Not because she couldn't do it, but because of the enormity of the emotion she was carrying with her. We sat on the side of the road, watching the other runners go by until she had regained her composure, and then finished the race hand-in-hand with tears streaming down our faces. She has run it every year since then, and every year that I have been in Canada, I have run it with her.
When I signed up to run the Shamrock Marathon last December, she told me that she would donate the entire $1800 if that was what I needed to get me to the start of the race... I didn't need her to do that, fortunately! But I was enormously grateful for that support. And then, come race day in March, she was not sending her support from Canada, she there at the starting line with me... she was there at the midway point cheering, she was sending text messages to me during the long and lonely stretch between miles 18 and 22, and she was there at the finish line, full of pride.
Needless to say, being able to share my Team In Training experiences with my mom has been a great pleasure for me. I hope that you too have someone who inspires and motivates and supports you in your endeavors.
I do wish that my mum would do more. When I visit I wish she would even come out for a walk, but she seems to be settling far too comfortably into her dotage *sigh*
ReplyDeletemy mom has always been active... and now that she's aging (aren't we all?!!) she really resents the fact that her body can't keep up with her intent.
ReplyDeletethat said, she's still more active than many people her age (or younger!)