Obstacles, half marathons and origami

Race day forecast.

I’m not looking forward to the pain of running a half marathon tomorrow, but there is a silver lining or two.
1.    The Obvious: I’m alive to do the half marathon
2.    The Obvious 2: I’d rather being running a painful half marathon than be being cut, poisoned, burned or having my hormones messed with (ie breast cancer treatment).

3.    The Schadenfreude: At least I’m not doing the full marathon like a friend of mine who is running the distance for the first time and is, quite frankly, terrified.
4.    The Glass Is Half Full: the rain and cold forecast for Sunday (see pic above) will keep me cool when the Tamoxifen-induced hot flushes hit me during the run.
Two nights ago I dreamt I was running the half marathon. It took me six hours and there were many extraordinary obstacles I had to overcome. They are far too peculiar for me to share here. I’m pretty confident I won’t see them on race day unless I take some mind-altering drugs before I set off.
In real life, I intend to be quite a bit faster than six hours. But my lack of speed is quite ridiculous and if my last two long runs are anything to go by I’m not going to be breaking any of my own records. A friend said to me the other day I should forget the past race times I have run. I’m starting all over again and setting a new baseline. She’s right. As much as I wanted to hit people who told me during my recovery to listen to my body, that’s my plan for tomorrow.
The other post treatment milestone for this week was finally taking the hyperfix tape off my surgery wounds.  I now have just a scar where the portacath was and the nipple looks miraculously like a nipple. When I look at it I wonder how a surgeon ever figured out that creating a nipple from the breast skin would, in fact, look like the real thing. Was there once a surgeon who did origami in his spare time and while making a paper crane one day his mind wandered and he thought “I know! I’ll fashion a nipple out of existing breast skin!”
The nipple now needs to be coloured to the right skin tone by a tattoo (which will also create the areola). I just have to wait for a bit more healing and then that is the next, and final, part of the reconstruction.
Anyway, enough about nipples, as exciting as they are.
My next report will be after race day. Fingers crossed  I finish before sundown....