The sprint through the past 20 years ...
I mentioned in my last post that I have no photos from my first triathlon. I lied! Here's my friend Chris and I at the Sandy Hook (NJ) Danskin sprint triathlon in September 2004. She talked me into it and by the end of the race, I was utterly hooked.
Temptation out of retirement
Which is why when Ironman Wisconsin (aka IMMOO) was picked as the team Ironman, there really wasn't much choice for me as it's one of the most beautiful and challenging races on the North American circuit. I've always had secret "outs" to my Ironman retirement: captaining a blind athlete (she'd be the true entrant), competing a day ahead in NZ, significantly aging up ... you know, like a decade or so. Plus there's a half-Ironman the day before which includes a relay, so plenty of opportunities for teammates to compete. In the end, there were ~60 Team Z athletes racing and supporting.
So I signed up. Yeah! I don't think anyone was surprised, though I did have to endure some good natured "I told you so"s. I rejoined the team and found it dramatically changed in some ways and completely unchanged in others. It's been bit of a tightrope that I've tried to walk - being an OG (I first joined in 2008 and was heavily involved through until 2016), I have a lot of experience to share, but also didn't want to come across as a know-it-all. Thankfully, IMMOO is very very very hilly and I happen to be very very very good at hills. Not fast. But efficient and fearless. So found lots of opportunities to try to help and that's good for my soul.
A gallop through 2024 ... straight into a brick wall
But before I get to that ... those of you who are friends on Facebook know that it all nearly didn't happen. In December, a 9ishcm tumor was found on one of my ovaries. All the signs pointed to surgery rather than watchful waiting (it was large, it was vascular, it was mixed solid and liquid filled) and the tumor markers (based on blood tests) were in the stratosphere. I had to rapidly educate myself about what is panic-worthy and what is simply a data point-in-time. Tumor marker results, for instance, are relevant over time - are they trending up, down, maintaining? So when the oncology gynecologist who's older than I am remarked that he'd never seen a result that high, I was able to find humor in the "win" and absorb the fact that even though the tumor walked like a duck, quacked like a duck, it might not be a duck.
It turns out it wasn't a duck.
It was pre-cancerous, so I'm very very grateful that I had abdominal pain bad enough to take me to the ER where they found it, as it could so easily have turned into cancer. Ovarian cancer is called the "silent killer" because the symptoms are seldom acute and extremely unremarkable, and because there's loads of room in our abdomens for things to grow unchecked. Plus, even though our annual exams cover pap-smears and mammograms, they don't include ultrasounds or other imaging that might catch it.
Anyhoo ... back up slightly. When the tumor was discovered and I knew I'd be having major open abdominal surgery (and possibly followed by chemotherapy), I went through a period of mourning for the 2024 I thought I'd be having ... a bike tour in Slovenia at the beginning of summer and Ironman at the end. I came to peace with it and started noodling Plan B - taking the van up to Canada on a trip I called "Oh, (Maritime) Canada!"
Recover was rough and long. But sometime, a couple of months after surgery, when I was feeling better, I got back on the bike, which made me think I could do a short bike tour. When Mark expressed that returning to our planned trip to Slovenia would represent that I was "back," we pulled the trigger on flights to Europe. What an astonishing trip. Zagreb, 11 days cycling in Slovenia from the Alps to the Adriatic, a magical couple of days exploring Venice.
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