Hello, Fall

So the summer heat has finally given permission for fall weather to arrive, and I’m maybe a little less enthusiastic than normal.  I’m eager to wear sweaters and flannel and hats and drink darker beers and fall asleep with an extra blanket on top of me, but there’s one thing I would really prefer to do without.  I’ve always had relatively cold hands/feet, chalk it up to a combination of a low resting heart rate (under 50bpm these days), lower than average blood pressure, and just not a lot of fat to insulate things, and it’s not a surprise that I have to opt for gloves and wool socks before most.  But last winter it was worse, and I wasn’t sure why, but I slowly figured out, that well, yeah, Raynaud’s syndrome is my new reality thanks to all the long term damage that chemo did last year.  I went for a run today, and I lost feeling in my fingertips halfway through.  It was 55 degrees out (not really all that cold), and I was wearing gloves too!  And really, the only cure is, “bundle up”.  My fingers and hands will be turning white a lot this winter, methinks.

Exactly a year ago, I was completing a half Ironman with very little training.  Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the last chemo I treatment I had.  Wow.

It’s been an entire year, and I still don’t really know how to process it.  I know one thing though – the fatigue that comes from a half Ironman, or multiple marathons with no training, will never match the fatigue from chemo.  There’s something about lying in bed, feeling like all of your limbs are made of concrete wrapped in lead with the gravity of Jupiter, physically unable to sit up to turn off the alarm clock in the morning that makes running a couple extra miles after a long day at work pretty easy.  Even with numb fingers.  There’s fatigue, and then there’s fatigue.

And so, these days, all of my focus is on running the Chicago Marathon in 3 weeks, and how I’m actually more confident that I’ll be in good shape for it as the days go by.  I keep going for runs and bike rides and my legs just never get tired.  It’s magical.