1.75 Miles

Last summer I was living up in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The time will come when I share stories about my predominantly Hassidic Jewish  neighborhood and adventures in the Big Apple, but for now, I was an intern at a not for profit organization that supported musicians, songwriters, engineers, anyone working in the music industry that was blind or visually impaired. In addition to the not for profit, I was also interning down the hall at a small  commercial studio with a blind producer. Monday-Thursday I commuted into Manhattan on the unreliable D train.

Being a student at a university in the western mountains of North Carolina, I enjoy hiking, back packing, other outdoor activities, and doing yoga. After I had been in the City for a couple of weeks, my body had started screaming at me craving that active lifestyle it was used to. Of course, hiking and back packing, in the conventional since, aren't very practical in the concrete jungle of New York. i'm sure you could dawn the apparel and appropriate accessories and go meandering through central park, but that really didn't sound appealing.  There are hundreds of yoga studios, but my bank account couldn't really manage the cost of a class. Yes, there are numerous free classes that're offered through out the City; I did practice, sweating profusely and my guide dog Alexa nibbling grass at my side,  with, literally, hundreds of other New Yorkers on the lawn of Bryant Park one Thursday evening. That was memorable...

One Saturday morning I found myself getting up early (before 8 am), eating a light breakfast, and making the treck up to the North East side of Central Park. The ride took a good hour and 20ish minutes. I was headed to meet up with a group I had heard about from a fellow athlete and guide dog user; she had trained for and competed in half marathons and triathlons with this group call Achilles International. They promote and support athletes with various disabilities, and twice a week in Manhattan they have group work outs in the Park. I had heard of other organizations like this one, and I had even participated with similar sounding groups, but I had always been disappointed in the lack of actual physical challenge the work out gave me. But, I was desperate. I should also point out that these work outs were primarily walking and running through the Park, and up until then I had hated running. My level of desperation for movement had become so intense that I was willing to go run, outside, in the middle of July, with strangers.

Right outside of the New York Road Runners Club I found a group of chatty people. They were very welcoming. We all gradually walked a couple of blocks over to the Park and then disbanded, athlete paired with guide(s). Like I mentioned before, there were athletes with a variety of different disabilities, and this really was empowering. For those of us who were blind and visually impaired, we would run/walk with a sited volunteer, one person holding the end of a tether and the other holding the opposite end. The guide would use the tether (e.g. shoe lace, grocery bag, bandana, etc.) to lead the athlete around people, pot holes, and other obstacles. My guides were Caroline and John, and they'd both been running for years. John was originally from New York, and he gave me all kinds of historical and social tid-bits of information about the part of the park we were in as we ran. On that one Saturday morning I ran 2 miles.

Fast forward to the fall semester of last year, and I found a running buddy to help me keep up my new found hobby. Maranda is a faculty member who I've come to know and sincerely love. Fast forward to January of this year, and I decided to sign up for the New York City St. Patrick's Day Half Marathon. John gladly agreed to be my guide, and Maranda was ecstatic about helping me train for my first race ever.

[Crossing the 13.1 mile finish line with guide John]

In the late spring Maranda found out she would have to have leg surgery. We were both saddened and upset that our weekly runs together would be postponed until, what the doctor was saying at that time, October. Unable to find a comparable running buddy, my runs became less frequent during the months of May and June. And July first flipped my world upside-down with news of my having Hodgkins.

During my first appointment with my oncologist I was told that long distance runs were not going to be in my near future. This piece of news was probably one of the hardest things for me to hear that day while my mom and I sat in the cold, obnoxiously bright, florescent lit, exam room. The doctor advised me that, because of the chemo, my body might not even feel up for running. He wanted me to avoid cardio heavy exercise. My mileage allowance was a single mile. Going from 4-5 mile runs once or twice a week to a single mile was devastating! I moped for a while about my doctor's news, but one day about a month ago a good friend really helped me gain a different perspective. There I was sulking about only getting to run a single mile and my friend says, "At least you're doctor is letting you run at all. You can relish that mile for all it's worth."

The first week of classes started in the middle of August, and Maranda had received great news from her doctor. Her legs were healing beautifully, and she was going to be able to run a  lot sooner than anticipated. During the first week of class she ran a mile, and the second week we were scheduling a time to run together.

This past Friday Maranda and I ran a glorious mile and 3 quarters. It was such a freeing time for the both of us, full of so much healing too. Before our start, we had a moment thanking our great Creator for His goodness. He has truly been both of our sources of strength these last 2-3 months in the midst of very uncomfortable and trying times.

Whatever it is that you're passionate about, running or other wise, I pray that you may find renewal through it. I hope that you might rejoice and be thankful for the big and little things.