Chapter One, Part 3: How To Describe My Dad

One thing that some people who knew my dad may not know about him is that he was very competitive, mostly with himself. He regularly set goals for himself in different areas of his life, probably most often in the sport of running.  His objective for events varied from race to race, whether it was to be among the top finishers, to run the race in a certain time, or to complete a race that was unlike one he had done before, like an ultra-marathon, an adventure race, or a triathlon.

Even with an objective in mind, though, Dad always tried to help other people who were also competing in the races in which he ran.  He often cheered people on in the middle of a race while he was running.  He thoroughly appreciated the spirit of competition and admired people who overcame adversity and challenges to rise to the top, especially when their success wasn’t expected.  On more than one occasion, Dad won a trophy or a medal in a race and then gave it to someone else who had competed in the race but who hadn’t won, often a child who had finished a race for the first time ever.

When I was a teenager, Dad took a couple of guys from my high school and me to a state park in Mississippi to compete in a small-town road race.  We left early on a Saturday morning, and, as we drove the last mile or so to the starting line, we saw a teenaged boy walking along the side of the road in basketball shorts, walking barefooted and carrying spiked track shoes.  The guys in the car and I laughed when we passed the boy because he seemed so poorly prepared for a race that was about to be run on a paved road.  Dad didn’t laugh, though; instead, he said, “You never know who’ll get the last laugh.”  We found out how true that was after the race when we found out that the boy had finished in second place overall, running on Dad’s heels with his spikes clicking on the pavement for the entire 5-mile race. 

From the time I started running, Dad often found out about races that were coming up in the area and registered me as well as himself in those events.  He and I ran in a total of roughly 100 events together over the years. One of his routines before a race was to size up the competition for himself and for me; in my competitive days, he gave me an honest assessment of how he thought I would fair in the field and if it seemed like I had “a shot at placing,” or finishing in the top three spots overall or in my age division.  Whenever possible, we drove the course ahead of time, with him pointing out any big hills or sharp turns along the way because, as he always said, those were the places to “make a move” to pass other runners just ahead on the route. In every race, he finished before me and then ran back to find me on the course, to cheer me on and give me advice, especially if he saw me struggling.  Once he had seen that I was ok, he would run ahead to the finish line to wait there for me to make it in. 

One thing that I think my dad learned from me after I had finished running competitively in high school is that there is a sense of pride and accomplishment that can come from just finishing a race, if that is one’s objective.  When I left home to go to college after high school, I went from running six days a week on a strict training program to running when I felt like it and when I could fit it into my schedule, a pattern which continued into my adulthood.  Dad told me many times that a runner has to “make time to run,” but he saw my priorities change and understood that running did not carry the same weight for me as it did for him. 

When I was in training to run my first half-marathon many years ago, I asked my dad if he would go on a long run with me so I could work on pacing before the race.  On the morning of the run, my brother-in-law drove Dad and me out into the country and dropped us off ten miles out of town so we could run back on mostly farm roads with limited traffic.  

I remember that I was wearing a running shirt that day that said "Run the mile you're in." After we'd gotten out of the car and started on the run, Dad looked at my shirt and said, "I don't get it - what else would you do besides running the mile you're in?"  That turned the conversation into a Who's On First-type of exchange that last for several minutes, until I said, "I think it's referring to the way that a person can choose to be grateful for what he has instead of thinking that the grass is always greener or that someone else is luckier than he is."  He thought for a second and then said, "I just don't get why somebody wouldn't do that, because, really, if you think you're lucky, then you are!"  

And that, in essence, was my dad.

Well Worth the Effort

Many mornings when I get up before the sun rises to see my daughter off to high school it reminds me of how I used to drag myself out of bed in the early morning on school days when I was her age.  I got up then, though, not because my school started really early like hers does, but because I had to get in a run before school when I was in the midst of a training season for track or cross-country. 

Early morning running with my dad

I’ve never been a morning person.  On most days, I get up because I have to, not because I want to at that particular time, and, truth be told, I hated getting up for those early morning runs.  It was always dark, and the temperature always seemed to be cooler than I preferred, even in the late spring or early fall months.  I was always a little stiff and often so tired at that time of day that I could hardly keep my eyes open as I ran down the street, guided by the streetlights, counting freshly thrown rolled-up newspapers in the driveways to pass the time as I went along.  Many afternoons or evenings when I ran, often for the second time in the same day, I did it because I loved it, but, on those mornings, I did it because my dad expected me to put in the extra effort.  It was part of the plan he had written out for me each week, the training program that he said would pay off at the next race, which, for me, was always just around the corner.  I loved the racing part, too, but not those morning runs – those I just struggled through.

I remember on so many occasions looking up as I crossed the finish line at the end of a race so that I could see the look on my dad’s face.  I judged my performance in each event by the look I saw in my dad’s eyes at the end of the race; in an instant, I could tell what he was thinking – and many times it was this: it was well worth the effort. 

I knew it then, and I know it even more now: there is such privilege that comes with knowing someone well enough to know what he or she is thinking, a secret code of which it is an honor to have an understanding.  I often think back to the few episodes of perhaps oddly placed confidence that I had when I was helping my dad during the weeks of his illness. One instance in particular occurred on the day my dad went from the hospital to a rehab facility across town. The hospital staff wanted to have him transported by ambulance, but I felt it was essential to his mental state not to have to ride in another ambulance at that juncture in his recovery. Somehow, from out of necessity I guess, I found the confidence to tell the nurses that I was certain I could safely help him get from a wheelchair to the car at the hospital and then from the car to the wheelchair and inside the rehab facility.  "I have no doubt I can keep him safe," I remember saying to a couple of nurses in the hallway outside his hospital room.  I felt like they were looking at me doubtfully, but they said ok and that was that.  I am trained in assisting with patient transfers like that, but I work with children, not adults.  I felt sure though; I knew I would do anything to help my dad, and I was confident that together our effort would pay off.

Doing whatever it takes, with both of us wearing the same expression of determination

There were a few more things that happened like that while he was sick, with my certainty coming from almost out of the blue, each time tied to the fact that I was completely determined to do whatever it took to help take care of my dad.  The most striking bout of unexplainable conviction that I experienced during his illness, though, was when he asked me how we would know what he wanted if he lost the ability to talk.

“I’ll just know,” I told him, somehow without missing a beat after he threw that question out into the room.  I cannot explain the sense of sureness I felt in the moment; looking back, I realize that it would have been much more reasonable for me to feel a sense of terror and uncertainty in the moment.  We were in the den of my parents’ house, the day after we’d brought him home from the hospital for the last time.  It was New Year’s Day, and my dad had not rebounded the way I’d thought he would once he was on his home turf.  He was still trying to eat to get his strength back, and he had been asking for small servings of food since he’d woken up that morning: “maybe a piece of bacon,” “some fruity dessert,” (which is what he called the cut-up pieces of fruit in a plastic bowl purchased from the produce section at the grocery store), and, the request always accompanied by a gesture of the quiet snapping of his fingers, “just a little piece of chocolate.” He’d asked for and had eaten a little of each, along with a sip of his favorite beer, Foster’s, which he drank through a straw while he sat up against the cranked-up mattress of the hospital bed in the middle of the den.  His voice was hoarse and breathy, and it seemed to be getting weaker as time went on despite the efforts of my dad to eat and take medicine that was supposed to make him feel better.

His concern about losing his ability to talk was legitimate, and I honestly don’t know the source of the confidence I heard in my own voice when I answered his question that day in the second-to-last verbal exchange I ever had with him.  I guess I would have to say it was an accolade of sorts for the extra time the rest of my family and I had been lucky enough to have with him over the weeks of his illness as we battled along with him.  I knew that if necessary, I would look at my dad and just know what he was thinking, just like those times many years ago when I crossed the finish line of a race. And again, it was well worth the effort.

Ironwoman

I recently read an article about a woman that I find to be very inspiring.  Her name is Kristin McQueen, and here's her story:

Ten years ago Kristin was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer.  Since then, she has had fifteen major surgeries and has undergone various cancer treatments including radiation on her brain.  To date, she has finished seventeen marathons and nine full Ironman competitions.  She has continued to train during her fight with cancer, she says, because when she's out there on the road she is in control, not cancer.  I think that's pretty badass. 

“Ironman is so much more than an endurance race," she says. "It is not about simply propelling myself 140.6 miles for kicks, it’s about challenging my limits and seeing what’s possible. It’s about reclaiming my body after five neck surgeries, two rounds of radiation, ten brain surgeries, and a slew of acquired physical challenges. It’s about not giving into all the limitations that cancer and its buddies have imposed on me, but viewing them as challenges that ultimately make the race even sweeter by overcoming them. It’s about going from not being able to open my eyes without getting sick, having difficulty sitting upright and being too weak to stand by myself to completing one of the ultimate tests of human endurance. It’s about raising money so that nobody else has to go through what I have. It’s about remembering those who have passed and honoring those who fight every day to live a 'normal' life despite a disease that tries to tear them down.”

As anyone who follows Ironman competitions knows, the Ironman Championship is held in October each year in Kona, Hawaii, and participants in the race have to qualify to enter.  It's "the big one," the granddaddy of all triathlons and one of the most rigorous events in sporting.

This year, the World Triathlon Corporation is giving seven athletes the opportunity to race at Kona though a program called Kona Inspired.  Each entrant in the contest has uploaded a 90-second video showing how their story relates to the theme of the contest, which is "Anything is Possible," and those who get the most votes will get to enter the race.  Kristin wants one of those slots.

If you are also inspired by this Ironwoman, here's how you can help, in three quick and easy steps:

1. Watch this video.
2. Vote for Kristin every day between now and May 7, 2013.
3. Share the info on Facebook and Twitter and any other social media feeds you have - and email the link out to others who may not be into social media.  Ask everyone you know to vote for Kristin!

Kristin, sporting a "SUCK IT, CANCER" message during a race

For at least a dozen years before he got sick, my dad always called or emailed me ahead of time to alert me to whenever an Ironman triathlon was coming on TV so I could watch, and many times he called me on the phone during the race so we could talk about it.  Every single time I have watched an Ironman on TV, I have cried.  I don't mind admitting it; I find not only the talent but also (and probably especially) the dedication and just the raw guts that it takes to go the distance so awe-inspiring, but it's the stories of the back-of-the-packers that get me going every time.  Even if you're not an Ironman fan (an Ironfan?), you know the storyline: the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I'm not sure which trumps which: the tears of the competitors who realize they will not be able to finish - or the tears of those who are crossing the finish line.  Either way, I can't imagine watching the race without being affected by those stories.

My dad wanted so badly to finish an Ironman competition; just a few days before he got sick - which was just a couple of weeks before his debut Ironman - he said he hoped to finish the event in less than twelve hours but that he would be happy just to finish at all.  After months of training and miles and miles on the road and in the pool, his chance to compete in the Ironman-North Carolina in 2010 was stolen from him by cancer, so unbelievably sad and so damn unfair.  As Kristin says, "Cancer is bullshit!"

Kristin has succeeded in finishing an Ironman - in fact, nine of them!  Most people feel they are giving their all when they finish a 5K, even if they are 100% healthy; Kristin has far surpassed that, while battling cancer. By any standard, she is already an Ironwoman, worthy of great respect and admiration for her athletic accomplishments.  The championship race in Kona, though, is within her reach, and I can't think of anyone who better embodies the idea that anything is possible.  With our help, she can make it there.

Good luck, Kristin; cancer can indeed SUCK IT!  I look forward to watching you amongst the other participants in the race on TV in October.  I can guarantee that I'll be watching - and crying.

Don’t Look Back

In April of 2004, my dad and I traveled to St. Louis to watch the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for the Women’s Marathon.  Going to see the marathon trials was a Bucket List item for both of us.  We spent the night in a hotel near the start of the race the night before; we were both so excited that we could hardly sleep all night.  It was an early race start – 7 a.m. – but we wanted to be sure to have a good view in the crowd of spectators at the start of the race, and so we got there almost an hour early.  I thought it was extra-cool that the event started at Frances Field on the track of my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, which was also, incidentally, the site of the 1904 Summer Olympics.

Over the course of my life, I watched countless races both in person and on TV with my dad.  Because he was always much more up-to-speed than I was about the field of competitors, he typically told me which runners we should “pull for,” as he put it.   He didn’t have to tell me that day, though; we were both long-time fans of Deena Kastor and had been following her running career since before she was married, back when she was Deena Drossin.  She had run the fastest debut marathon for American women in 2001 and was the national champion in women’s cross-country.  A California native, she was a four-time SEC champion in track and field as a collegiate competitor at the University of Arkansas, which was where Dad had started following her running career in the news.  She held several U.S. records in running and was internationally ranked, twice finishing as the runner-up at the World Cross County Championships, the most important competition in international cross-country running.

Our favorite, Deena (or "Deener," as Dad pronounced her name), is sporting a #1 here.

As Dad and I sat in the front row of the stadium seats at Frances Field that day, we watched the runners stretching and milling around nervously before the start of the race.  Dad had a copy of the course map and had circled in red the points where he thought we should stand during the marathon to watch the runners go by.  The course consisted of 3.5 loops through Forest Park, a 1300+ acre park located in the western part of the city, and ended at the World's Fair Pavilion in the park.  The layout of the runners’ route made it an ideal race to spectate, and, as soon as the starting gun was fired and the athletes completed four laps around the track and then raced out the gate onto the street, Dad and I high-tailed it out of the stadium to claim our spot on the curb at the three-mile mark.

Exiting the track for the on-road portion of the race

A runner named Blake Russell took the lead early on and was about a minute ahead of Deena and four other women when they came by us three miles into the 26.2-mile long race.  Deena and a couple of the others were giving out occasional high-fives to some people standing on the curb as they passed by; Dad called out “Good pace; don’t lose touch” to her, just like he’d advised me in countless races of a much smaller scale.  She looked right at him and gave him a nod as she and the others in the pack flew by, and then Dad and I rushed to get back in the car so we could make it to stand around the 7-mile mark before the leaders got there.  

Just a few minutes after we’d staked our claim on our spot at that point, we saw the front pack racing up the hill in front of us.  Deena had closed the gap on Blake by about 20 seconds, but the rest of the leaders were right on Deena’s tail.  “Pick it up half a step, but don’t go all out yet,” Dad advised her in his regular-speaking voice volume as she sprinted by.  I didn’t think she’d heard him until I saw her flick her right hand out to the side in a quick gesture of acknowledgement and then noticed her get a little higher up on the balls of her feet in an obvious effort to pick up the pace.  

Blake (#4) in the lead at Mile 12

Our next planned check-point was at Mile twelve.  There was an aid station there with all different kinds of water bottles on the table, each marked with a different runner’s name and no doubt filled with a specific concoction of that competitor’s specifications.  While we waited, Dad and I joked around about trying a drink from the various bottles to see what was in each one, but, when he saw the runners coming around the corner, he got serious and started bouncing on the balls of his feet like he always did when he was nervous.  Blake was still out ahead about the same distance.  Deena grabbed her water bottle from the table and then side-stepped to get out of the way of the other runners coming up behind her as she stopped to take off her shoe; apparently, she’d felt a rock in there and wanted to try to get rid of it.  She quickly put her shoe back on, took a swig from her water bottle, tossed the bottle down, and then bolted ahead to get back in the race.  She quickly caught and picked off the other front runners who'd passed her except for Blake, who had increased her lead to about a minute again.

Dad and I raced to get to the 15-mile mark and were excited to see that Deena had lessened the gap to only about 20 seconds by then; “Keep it right there!  Pace yourself; you’re right where you need to be,” Dad told her in a conspiratorial voice.  She looked at him and gave him a quick nod as she ran past us.  It was so impressive to see how fast the turnover rate of all of the runners’ legs was as they went by; they made it look almost effortless, but we knew it was far from that at the pace they were putting in.

Next Dad and I positioned ourselves near the 19.5 mark, and a few minutes later we saw the women approaching.  Deena was in front this time, leading by just a few seconds over Blake, who was tailed by about 30 seconds by another runner, Colleen De Reuck, a 40 year-old South African native who became a U.S. citizen just after the previous summer Olympics.  As Deena got closer to where we stood, we saw her glance back over her shoulder a couple of times to gauge the position of the runners behind her, a move that I knew from my days in competitive running that Dad did not think was good strategy.  “Don’t look back – it shows weakness!” he advised adamantly as Deena flew by us, and again she gave him a right-handed sideways wave of recognition.  

After the rest of the front runners passed by, Dad and I decided that we wanted to go to the end of the course to try to secure a good spot by the finish line.  We parked and walked towards the big Finish Line banner, and we were thrilled to see there was room just past the tape near the media truck.  The race was being announced in a play-by-play fashion over the loud speaker, and we listened among the other spectators to hear.  At Mile 22, Deena was still in the lead by a small margin, and Colleen had overtaken Blake.  Over the next couple of miles, the crowd alternately grew quiet and cheered as we heard Deena’s lead being decreased by Colleen little by little, until #2 De Reuck became #1 and then continued to forge ahead to build her lead on Deena and the rest of the field. 

At the finish, thousands of fans holding little American flags lined the streets. Someone held out a big America flag on a pole to Colleen about 200 meters before the tape; Colleen grabbed it and crossed the finish line in first place, carrying the flag, with a huge smile on her face, setting a U.S. Olympic trials record with her time of 2:28.25.  (Her win qualified her for her fourth Olympics - pretty impressive at age 40!)  Deena was the runner-up and finished strong with a time of 2:29:38, followed by Jen Rhines, who had run in the lead pack the entire race and finished third in 2:29:57. Blake came in fourth with a time of 2:30:50.

Colleen De Reuck - winner of the 2004 Olympic Trials Women's Marathon

For the first time in history, the top three runners in this event all finished in under 2 hours, 30 minutes.  These three women were draped in huge American flags as they climbed up onto the awards podium a little while later to accept their medals and to claim their spots on the U.S. Olympic Team.

After the runners had come down from the stage and the frenzy had died down a little, Deena happened to look up and see us at the edge of the crowd.  With the flag still draped over her shoulders, she walked over and called out “Thanks for the advice!” to Dad.  “Sure!” he responded casually, as if we stood around talking to Olympians every day.  She gave us a wave and stepped off into the swarm of reporters, and we turned to find our way back to the car, tired but excited from our big adventure.

A few months later, as Dad and I watched the Olympic women's marathon on TV at our respective houses, I thought back to the Trials and to the advice he’d given out to Deena during the race.  Deena’s third place finish in the marathon in Athens was one of the highlights of the 2004 Summer Games.  She toughed out the extreme heat, paced herself just right, and made our country proud when she stood with the olive wreath on her head to accept the bronze medal.  As I watched her going the distance over the 26.2 miles she ran that day, I never once saw her looking back.  And now, remembering back to Deena's big win that day, I can’t help but think that, along with strategies of her coaches and the wisdom she'd learned along the way as a professional athlete, she also had my dad’s voice in her head, urging her on, telling her she was right where she needed to be, just as I have in mine each and every day of my life.

Why Wouldn't I?

As far back as I can remember, I noticed my dad being friendly and nice to other people.  It was obvious that not only did he not judge people based on their income bracket, size, shape, education level, skin color, religion, or anything else, but he didn’t even consider it.  As evidence by his actions and his words, in his eyes, anyone and everyone was deserving of kindness.

He once had an employee whose name was Pat-a-Cake.  The first time that Dad needed to do the payroll after he’d hired the guy, he asked his new employee what his last name was.  Pat-a-Cake’s response was that he didn’t know; he couldn’t read or write and didn’t have any legal records to show his official name due to a house fire when he was a young child.  Dad came home from work that day talking about how he needed to figure out a way to pay the guy.  He ended up just writing the check to Cash, driving Pat-a-Cake to the bank, showing him how to endorse the check on the back with an “X,” and then driving him home on Friday afternoons each week. 

During the summer before I started fifth grade, my dad wanted to introduce me to competitive running.  He felt it would be better for me to be coached by someone other than himself.  The track program in our town was an AAU Program called the Alcorn Track Team and was headed by a man named Coach McCoy.  Dad signed me up for it, and I spent my summer hanging out at the track and getting to know the other kids on the team.

Me, trying to keep up with my teammate, Neesie

These kids were from low-or very-low income families; some of them showed up at the cinder track where we ran every day barefooted and wearing jean cut-off shorts because they didn’t have money to buy running shoes or running shorts.  Some of them ran to practice because they didn’t have transportation; Coach McCoy drove an old cargo van, and he gave rides to any kids on the team who asked him so they could make it to practice.

Our team went to several out-of-town track meets that summer; kids rode with Coach McCoy and the few parents who had cars, including mine, to get to the towns where the meets were held.  Dad paid for a lot of hotel rooms, and we all piled in, sleeping three or four to a bed and some in sleeping bags on the floor.  It was great fun.  I got faster and tougher as a runner under Coach McCoy’s direction, and, even more importantly, I gained some valuable perspective as a result of being on this team.

Late in the month of May before Dad got sick, he and I had registered to run a race together.  When we went to pick up our race packets the afternoon before the race, there was a long line of people ahead of us.  One woman very obviously cut in line several people in front of us, and I was itching to call her out on it.  I thought Dad was going to say something to her about it when we got up to the registration table and the woman was there, but he instead smiled at her and wished her luck in the race.

 

I watched the expression on her face go from a scowl to a grin in return, and, after she had walked off, I said to Dad, “I should try to be nicer to people.  It really takes more effort to be nasty to someone else than it does to be kind to them, doesn’t it?”

Dad, who - as usual - didn’t realize that he was the Teacher in an Important Life Lesson, looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Huh?  How does it take any effort at all to be nice to somebody?  It doesn’t cost me anything, and you never know – that person may be in the middle of the worst day of their lives – so I figure, why WOULDN’T I be nice to them?”

"Everybody's beautiful, in their own way" - I remember Dad singing this so often when I was growing up; in fact, until I was a teenager, I thought he'd made up the song.

The Icing on the Cake

For the last ten years or so, I've watched a good portion of the Tour de France on TV every summer.  In general, biking isn’t on my list of favorite sports to spectate, but I’ve always been impressed by the extreme sportsmanship and the endurance, tenacity, and just downright toughness displayed during this event in which participants cover 2,200 miles of very challenging terrain over three weeks.

But the real reason I’ve watched is for the annual Tour-related camaraderie that I’ve enjoyed with my dad.  Betting and bantering about whether or not Lance would “pull it off again,” as Dad termed it, waiting and watching for the wrecks, and of course discussing and debating about the politics of the race, which mostly boiled down to talking about all the drug-testing drama.

Dad was a big Lance fan.  When Dad talked about the reasons why Lance should be admired, he said, “His Cancer Story was just the icing on the cake."  Dad and I agreed that, whether or not the famous athlete “doped,” he was a Machine, full of toughness and grit, “not to mention,” Dad said, “a marketing master!”

Dad in 2003 with Lance Armstrong's second book, "Every Second Counts"

Dad was always so impressed by the guys in the Tour who wrecked and then got back up and continued riding.  "Now that's Tough!" he would say admiringly when we were watching on TV and saw one of the many spills and recoveries. 

It was funny to me that Dad never saw his own extraordinariness.  For example, once when I was about eight years old, I was playing in the front yard of our house when an unfamiliar vehicle pulled up in our driveway.  Dad got out of the car, thanked the driver, and turned around to face me.  He had blood dripping down the side of his head. 

"What happened?"  I asked.

"I was running across a 2-lane bridge and an RV that didn't have enough room to get over side-swiped me," he said.  I didn't even know what side-swiped meant, but I figured it wasn't anything good based on the blood that kept coming and coming. 

"I was going to keep running, but I knew your mom would be upset if I didn't come straight home to get this cleaned up," he said, as he headed into the house. 

When I was in the seventh grade, my dad was running a marathon and, in third place 18 miles into the race, he was hit by an old lady driving a car who hadn't seen him because the sun was shining in her eyes.  She hit him from behind, and he flew up over her windshield and landed in the road.  She was screaming so much that he, while lying in the street with a broken leg, had to try to calm her down until the police got there a few minutes later.

He was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where we met him after the police found us on the course, waiting at the 20-mile mark, where Dad had told us to wait to cheer for him.  When we got to the hospital, he wasn't at all focused on the pain from the bone sticking out of his leg but instead was concerned because the force of being hit by the car had knocked off one of his running shoes, which he wanted back, and because he wouldn't be able to finish the race. 

The orthopedic surgeon told him that he would be in a cast for several months and would not be able to run again for at least six months.  Four weeks later, Dad used a kitchen knife to cut the cast off his leg and was out on the road again, training for his next race.

"Get this thing off me!" - Dad with his cast after being hit by the car in the marathon

In the 1990's, Dad finished several ultra-marathons, including a 48-hour race that he did on an indoor track, and a 24-hour race, after which he jumped into the car, drove several hours to help me load up my stuff to move out of my dorm, and drove three hours home.

Dad with his cheerleader Mom at the 46-hour point of the 48-hour ultra

Dad with one of his Support Crew members (me) putting ice packs on his legs at the halfway point of his first 24-hour ultra

A couple of years ago, Dad entered an off-road triathlon near my house.  He left early in the morning, and when he got back, his elbow and his knee were both bloody.  He said on the mountain biking portion of the race the biker in front of him wrecked, which caused Dad to wreck into him with so much force that it bent the seat of the bike into a 90 degree angle.  Since the bike was then unrideable, Dad picked it up and carried it, running more than a mile to the transition point, where he ditched the bike and took off on the trail run part of the event.  He said, "Don't worry, though, I'll get the bike fixed, and, best of all, I still won my age division."

A few days after that race, he said he was having some trouble breathing and so he went to the doctor, who had a chest x-ray done.  Evidently, in the bike wreck, in addition to breaking the seat of the bike and scraping his elbow and knee, Dad had broken two ribs.

Dad, at the start of the "bike leg" of the triathlon in which he qualified for the National Masters in 2009

Then there was the Big Bike Wreck three years ago.  Dad was on a long training ride, probably 75 miles or more, and was riding by himself on country roads in Missouri.  He usually didn't take his cell phone with him on bike rides, but for some reason he had brought it along on this one, even using it to call Mom right before he left to tell her he would be gone for a few hours.

At some point on the ride, a guy driving a pick-up truck with several children in the truck bed wasn't paying attention and didn't see Dad on his bike in the road in front of him.  The driver hit Dad from behind, and, again, Dad flew over the top of the vehicle and landed in the road, this time with his feet still clipped to the pedals of the bike.  He landed very hard on his back and immediately found that he couldn't move his arms or legs at all.  The driver had stopped but hadn't gotten out of the truck yet, and Dad said he was screaming at the guy to call 9-1-1.

Here's the really crazy part of the story:  apparently, when Dad was thrown to the ground by the impact, his cell phone got bumped and the redial button was hit.  Mom thought it was odd when she saw on her phone's Caller I.D. that Dad was calling back so soon after he'd started his bike ride, and when she answered, all she could hear was Dad screaming for someone to call 9-1-1 and saying that he couldn't move.  She kept him on the line and then used another phone to call 9-1-1.  She made it to the scene of the accident just as Dad was being loaded into the ambulance, and, by the time they made it to the hospital, Dad was moving his extremities again, although he had a major case of Road Rash and was understandably sore.  He didn't even spend the night in the hospital that night, and - you guessed it - he was back out on the road within a couple of weeks.

When Dad found out he had brain cancer, one thing that kept him going was the fact that Lance Armstrong had had cancer in his brain too.  Lance had not only survived the cancer and the treatment, but he had gone on to win the Tour de France a record-setting seven times after that.  We held that up for inspiration and, for awhile, really believed that Dad would beat the odds and get back to biking like Lance had as well as running and swimming, too.  

Not long after Dad was diagnosed, we started talking about how when he was cured we would write a book to tell about what he had been through.  "I'm not famous like Lance," he said, "but maybe if I can beat brain cancer that would be a good story!"

During Dad's illness, I saw him get proverbially knocked off the bike many times, and, each time, just like those guys in the Tour, he got right up and kept on going.  When he was first told he had cancer, he said, "Well, at least I've got good insurance and great family support."  He never complained that virtually overnight he had gone from being in Ironman-triathlete shape to having to use a walker to get around his room in the hospital and then in rehab.  When the therapists at rehab showed him exercises to do during therapy sessions, he gave it his all, often doing extra reps in his room after therapy was over for the day.  When he had to be stuck repeatedly with needles for blood draws and I.V.'s, he told the techs and the nurses, "That's ok; I know you're doing the best you can."  Time and time again, as many times as his body would let him, he got back on the bike.

I value every second of the time I got to spend with Dad during the ten weeks he was sick.  I got to see the depths of his courage, humility, love, and determination.  But actually, though, his Cancer Story was just the Icing on the Cake.

           Lance Armstrong was said to have this song, "My Father's Eyes," on his pre-workout Playlist last summer.

The Spirit – Not the Spirit of Competition

I’ve been thinking a lot about competitiveness and its place in my life lately.

Dad was very competitive, unless it was at the expense of someone else.  He always set goals for himself for running, whether it was to be among the top finishers, to run the race in a certain time, or to complete a race that was unlike one he had done before, like an ultra-marathon. 

Even with an objective in mind, though, Dad always tried to help other people who were also competing.  He often cheered people on in the middle of a race while he was running.  He always appreciated the spirit of competition and admired people who overcame adversity and challenges to rise to the top, especially when their success wasn’t expected.  On more than one occasion, Dad won a trophy or a medal in a race and then gave it to someone else who had competed in the race but who hadn’t won, often a child who had finished a race for the first time ever.

When I was a teenager, Dad drove a couple of guys from my high school and me to a state park in Mississippi to compete in a small-town road race.  We left early on a Saturday morning, and, as we drove the last mile or so to the starting line, we saw a teenaged boy walking along the side of the road in basketball shorts, walking barefooted and carrying spiked track shoes.  The guys in the car and I laughed when we passed the boy because he seemed so poorly prepared for a race that was about to be run on a paved road.  Dad didn’t laugh; he said, “You never know who’ll get the last laugh.”  We found out how true that was after the race when we found out that the boy had finished in second place overall, running on Dad’s heels with his spikes clicking on the pavement for the entire 5-mile race.  

The last race that he and I participated in together was in May of 2010 and was a Muddy Buddy event in which teams of two had to tag-team over a 7 mile course, taking turns on foot and on a mountain bike.  Teams were put into age divisions according to the combined ages of the two teammates; Dad and I were in the “Over 105 Years Old” age division!  Many teams had dressed in costumes, some of which were quite elaborate.  When everyone lined up at the starting line, I told Dad that we if we ever did another race like this, we should plan to wear something better than the matching t-shirts we had on.  He said, “I think it’d be better just to train more than to hassle with getting costumes.  Today I mostly just don’t want to get beaten by someone who is running in a tutu.”

In this race, Dad started out first on the bike.  At the one-mile mark, he parked the bike and set out on foot.  I started among the other first-leg runners, several minutes behind the first-leg bikers, and ran to the one-mile point and then hopped on the bike.  We continued to leap-frog like that over the rest of the course.  At one point, I was running and heard footsteps coming up behind me.  I turned around and saw Dad running (he was supposed to be biking that leg since I was running it), carrying our bike and another bike too.  

“What happened?” I asked him.  He said that a girl on the course had had a flat tire, and so he offered to carry her bike to the next check-point so that someone there could get started on fixing the tire while she completed that part of the race.  He added, “Don’t worry though, I’ll make sure we still don’t get beaten by anyone wearing a tutu!”

I know in my head that grief and loss are not a competition, but I sometimes cannot help myself from thinking about his death as being more tragic, unfair, shocking, etc. etc. than some other people who were his age or older, who were in poor health because they didn’t take care of themselves, or other illogical ranking factors.  It doesn’t make sense to compare, I know.  It’s hard for me to listen to others’ stories of grief or loss without adding my personal experience or thoughts or advice, but I know I have no idea what I am talking about.  Everyone thinks his or her story is the hardest and most unique.  I guess it isn’t a competition when your heart is broken.  It’s not more or less broken; it’s just broken.  In other words, no heart wears a tutu.