In May of 1999, I was diagnosed with cancer, and it pissed me off.
In January of that year, I started training for a half-marathon. With all the quality miles that I had tracked, I knew that I would see my best time. Sure, the actual winners of the race would laugh at my middle-of-the-pack record, but for me, those magical numbers would sing.
Instead, four days before the race, I sat in a doctor’s office, heard him pronounce that nasty word “malignancy,” and then found myself on an operating table.
I missed the race.
After the surgery, I spent a month kowtowing to the radiation machine. One-and-a-half years later, I opted for the extra challenge of the full 26.2 mile monster. I completed the race, tears running down my face as I staggered across the finish line.
That’s the happy-movie, truncated version of the story.
The truth is a little more difficult to explain. After the surgery, the treatment, and the quietly reassuring words of my doctors, I should have been relieved. I should have said to myself,
I’m going to fulfill the goal that cancer interrupted.
I’ll work hard and whip my body into shape. And when asked, that’s what I did say: I was running the marathon to fulfill an interrupted ambition.
But in truth, I was also enraged at my body. It had betrayed me. I had remained relatively healthy for almost three decades, and it had been deliberately nasty to me. Well, I could be mean, too. So I spanked it with a marathon.
I should have dropped out at mile 17 when the cramps wracked my left side, but I kept going, a profane mantra echoing in my head and occasionally emerging from my mouth:
F@*! you, Cancer, F@*! you, Cancer, F@*! you, Cancer.
I crossed the finish line, praying that I had exorcised the evil creature from my life, sure that I had punished my body, which would now behave.
But I woke up the next morning, somewhat sore, and feeling…the same. Apparently, when I collected my souvenir race shirt, I forgot to pick up my Hollywood catharsis.
Nope. No beautiful epiphany. No sudden lifting of the worries. Running a race, however symbolic, did not appease the fears or anger that still gnawed at me.
Only time had that power.
Almost a full decade later, I can look at that event in my life with an understanding that escaped me then. There was no moral to my cancer story. There was no moral to my marathon story. Rather, there was only the story: beautiful and foul, uplifting and profane.
I suspect that most true sports stories are the same. To be packaged, they must be revised and codified by those who make a business of selling tales. The true versions, however, are not so easy to package. They are raw and human. They capture the violence of curses uttered in the dying moments of a race.
Seven years ago, I ran a race because I wanted to show my body that I was stronger than it, because I wanted to show Mr. Mortality that he hadn’t yet found me, because I was angry. I wanted my cancer story to be a fairy tale.
Now I run because that’s who I am— a man who values the joy of placing one foot in front of the other. I still despise Cancer, but now I understand him a little more. He is Time’s ugly minion, a gangly creature who, as he whispers to us of our coming demise, also reminds us that we should listen for the slap of our feet on the asphalt, rather than the music of magical numbers.
F@*! you very much, Cancer.
Robin Follet lives, writes, and cartoons in North Carolina.
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November 19th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Our fitness crush Andrew Heffernan blogged about Robin’s post on Male Pattern Fitness. A very sweet and thoughtful response. Thanks, Andrew.
Here is a link to Andrew’s post:
www.malepatternfitness.com/2008/11/18/664508/the-power-of-starting-agai
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