Things I love about running

I’m back running after my enforced rest.
After what ended up being two weeks of no running I couldn’t wait to hit the trails again. In just one run, here are the things I enjoyed:

• Feeling the wind blow through my hair. More than a year after it started growing back half way through my chemo treatment (when I switched chemo drugs) I now have enough hair to feel the wind blowing through it (if this were a video blog, about now you'd be seeing me running in slow motion with my hair waving in the breeze). It feels pretty damn good.
• Running past about 100 students at a local boys’ high school who were practising the haka on the school tennis courts. The energy coming from that group of boys was so great, it felt like the ground was shaking.
• Feeling the air rush by my cheek when a Kereru whooshed past my head, frightening the life out of me.

I enjoyed my first run back so much that I didn’t even mind when I saw my nemesis on the trails. Many runners have someone they want to beat, even in training. To put my nemesis in context I have to point out that since my cancer treatment I am an even slower runner than I was pre-breast cancer, which is saying something. I'm used to being overtaken by other runners - even elderly runners, small children, tortoises etc. But a couple of months back I was overtaken two weeks in a row by the same man. He wasn't elderly. But he was walking. He was a proper speed-walker type so he wasn’t dawdling and we were going up a steep hill on both occasions. But the fact remains that he was walking and I was running. The only reason he didn't overtake me three weeks in a row was because I changed my long run route - I couldn’t bear to have it happen again. I consoled myself with the thought that he looked extremely silly as he waggled (yes waggled; that's what speed walkers do) up the hill - and surely his hips won’t last. I also fantasised about tripping him up if he dared try to pass me ever again.
But when I saw him on that first run back I was enjoying myself so much that I even managed to give him a smile as my hair waved in the breeze (cue video of startled-looking man wondering why strange woman is smiling at him as she shakes her head/hair manically, yet in slow motion...). My goodwill toward him was made easier by the fact he was walking toward me and not overtaking me of course.
In other news, the new nipple looks good - or as good as it can with stitches still in. The portacath wound is also healing nicely. I forgot to ask my surgeon about getting hold of the port to keep – but I guess since he didn’t have it there, it’s been thrown away by now. No UFO necklace for me (see Goodbye portacath....hello 10 days on the couch). Ah well.