Sunday, August 5, 2012

Looking Back and Running Forward

I haven't written a blog since June and that's with fairly good reason.  July brought a double whammy that left me staggering, even though I was still running.  My Grandaddy entered hospice care on Saturday, July 7th and peacefully passed away a few short days later on July 10th.  He was possibly the person who has been the most proud of me for my entire life.  He found himself a single man unexpectedly shortly before I was born, so in the first years of my life he filled his spare moments with me, his first grandchild.  In his words, "We were buddies."  Deservedly or not, Grandaddy beamed with pride with every one of my accomplishments, great or small.  Every person should have someone who is so unabashedly on their side.

Grandaddy was a runner and often talked about how he would rather run than walk throughout his teenage years.  He held the mile record in our hometown's high school until his own son broke that record.  So on the day he passed away and the days that led up, I ran to honor him and to remember this wonderful man who had given so much to me.

In the kind of oddness that is life, my mother was diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia on the same day her father, Grandaddy, passed away.  It was the kind of day that can break you.

But it didn't.  And it won't. 

I continue to find strength in prayer, from my DH, from dear friends, and from running.  I have run through tears in July and run with such a heavy heart that I have broken down in tears mid-run.  But now, it is August.  It's a new month and I have a race next week.  I'll be at The Hottest Half to continue pursuing my goal of 12 half marathons in 2012.  I am afraid of my first DNF because it just keeps getting hotter here in Texas and I'm woefully under-trained due to some of my woe in July.

What's my race plan?  First, hydrate (and that should probably be what I do second, just to be safe).  The rest of my plan is to make my body do what my mother's cannot while she is hospitalized to receive chemo and to think about how proud Grandaddy would be to see me try.