New Tricks

In the week since I posted my last blog entry, I have learned quite a few things. Since I’ve never done a triathlon, and I’ve never taken on a major fundraising project, this should not have come as a surprise. But I don’t always think things through before I dive in (you’re shocked, I know). Some of my lessons were funny, some poignant, and some just plain painful. For your reading enjoyment, I’ve compiled a short list.

My daughter commandeering my cycling shoes.

1. Sometimes the money comes from where you least expect it.

When you do a fundraiser like this, you think you can predict who is going to donate money and who won’t. What you can’t predict is that your blog is going to blaze through social networks like wildfire and people who don’t even know you are going to lay down huge chunks of money. I have already raised fifty percent of my goal. In one week. Many of my donors are people I don’t know at all. I am humbled and grateful and shocked. On the flip side, over 2,000 people read my last post. If every single one of those people donated just $5 to the cause, I would have exploded my fundraising goal. Please don’t forget that small acts of kindness can add up to really big, amazing, life-changing things.

2. Learning two new sports, especially when you don’t have a key piece of equipment, is tricky.

True, swimming is not exactly a new sport for me. But I haven’t done it competitively for fifteen years. There is some rust to shake off. (OK, a lot.) And I forgot that I always look like a raccoon for hours after a pool workout. This is kind of awkward when you have a business meeting immediately afterward. To get around that, I invested in goggles that are more like a snorkeling mask than actual goggles. I am quite certain that the hardcore triathletes at my pool are deeply embarrassed for me (I swear I bought them at a reputable swim shop). So I look like a fool in the water, but at least I don’t look like a dork afterward. I promise I will get different goggles for racing.

If Aquasphere makes them, they must be cool, right?

Pool etiquette is particularly interesting. Swimmers get a bit uppity if someone is swimming in the “wrong” lane, and it took me a lot of laps of passing slower people to finally have the guts to switch to the fast lane. That is, the lane of the Ironman tattoos and flip turns and speedos and serious-looking coaches on the pool deck. It’s intimidating, no doubt. And it also makes me swim faster (fear of getting passed, or of being kicked in the face while being passed, is apparently a great motivator). I guess that’s not so bad.

      As for cycling, that truly is a new sport for me. The fact that I am currently training on a heavy mountain bike makes me certain that once I get on a road bike, I’ll simply be flying. That’s true, right? I’ll be whipping past everyone on my new steed, when it miraculously appears. Either that or I will be crashing in a twisted heap of metal because I can’t get out of my pedals in time, or because I can’t balance on the aerobars. All definite possibilities. And if my bike doesn’t appear, well, then I’ll be racing on a mountain bike. Worse things have happened. (In my life, that statement will pretty much always be true.)

3. Cyclists have a lot of rules.

My trusty steed. Perfect for a triathlon, right?

When I committed to this event, my husband gave me the rundown on everything I needed to know about cycling. I also read Bike Snob. Coming from running, where pretty much anything goes (Shoes? Shirt? Shorts? You’re good to go), I discovered that cyclists have a lot of rules. You can’t have a visor on your helmet when on a road bike. You can’t wear fingerless gloves on a mountain bike. You can’t wear a jersey with a big logo that is different from the big logo on your shorts. You cannot wear road shoes on a mountain bike. Fenders are decidedly uncool (even if they are super practical). And that’s not even including the triathlete rules, which I know nothing about except that there are many.

Also, my sitz bones were not prepared for the effects of two-hour bike rides. While a long ride doesn't hurt in the same way as a long run, having something hard wedged into your rear end for two hours is really not the most pleasant thing on earth. You know what else hurts? Being passed by an old guy on a commuter bike, with panniers no less, who doesn't even look like he’s trying very hard. Clearly I've got a long way to go.

4. You need a very understanding spouse to do this.

Let’s just say that no one is the best mother or housekeeper after putting in two workouts a day. Between training, fundraising, my business, yoga teacher training, and writing, I am sufficiently maxed out. I am living out of laundry baskets and ignoring dirty floors. My husband has endured more pita pizza dinners than he probably should. But he doesn’t complain. And he fixes my bike. That’s love.

5. Not everyone sees things the way you do.

Honestly, I should know this by now. But it’s a good lesson to re-learn. Since I started this endeavour, most people have been remarkably encouraging. Even if people were unable to donate money, they sent words of encouragement. But some people don’t understand why I would ever want to submit myself to such rigorous training. Others don’t understand how racing a triathlon in Hawaii is beneficial to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Am I just asking you to pay for my vacation? No. But it’s a fair question, so I thought I should explain.

First of all, I didn’t pick the location. I was looking for a way to raise money for LLSC, and my injury dictated that it couldn’t be a marathon. I checked the Team in Training website and this was the first feasible option for me. The fact that it was in Hawaii was a definite bonus, but I would still be doing this even if it were in Toronto. Second, if I just wanted a free trip to Hawaii, I would already be done. (I definitely don’t need $6,400 to fly to Kona.) Third, I am paying for a good chunk of the travel expenses myself, LLSC gets great group and charity rates, and I am looking elsewhere to cover the rest. Fourth, and perhaps most important, is that these destination events are why Team in Training is so popular. Many people who have no connection whatsoever to blood cancers still have wildly successful fundraising campaigns, because they want to do the cool events. If it didn’t benefit LLSC to send people to Hawaii, they wouldn’t do it.

So… if you’re hesitant to pay for my trip to Kona, that’s OK. Between my own money and other resources, it’s already paid for. But I’m still raising funds, because I want to contribute as much as I can to blood cancer research and survivor support. It’s really not about Hawaii.

I am learning things about this process every single day, and it’s important to me not only to raise money and race well, but also to be a good ambassador for the LLSC. If that means a bigger personal investment, a sorer backside, and a raccoon face, then I guess that’s what it takes.

So when I hobble off my husband’s old mountain bike with road shoes on and rings around my eyes, you can pretend you don’t know me. I’ll understand.

Do It Anyway

May 2011. Ten months pre-diagnosis (and eight months pregnant).

“Mommy, do brave people ever get scared?”

“Yes, they get very scared.”

“Then why do we call them brave?”

“Because, honey, brave people get very scared, and then they do it anyway.”

Last October, I was celebrating one hundred days post-transplant. My hair had only just started to grow back. Peach fuzz. I was still wearing a wig and I had no eyebrows. I was a skeletal waif, shuffling along the river paths, and I could barely do one push-up. I could “run” for about fifteen minutes, tops.

Fast-forward a year. My two-year-old daughter talks like a three-year-old diva, my son is in kindergarten, I have re-defined my professional goals, I have gained nearly 10 pounds of muscle, and I am now training for a triathlon.

Am I scared? Yes. Will I still do it? Yes.

Because really, what is so scary? Well, I’m a bit scared of swimming in the open water with limbs flailing everywhere. I’m scared of being kicked in the face, losing my goggles, or of someone swimming over top of me. I’m also scared of learning to ride a tri or road bike, which are both very different from a mountain bike. Wait, back up. I’m scared of not even having a bike to race on. I’m scared of getting a flat tire and not remembering how to change it. I’m scared of crashing. I’m also a little scared of the run, even though it is my strongest sport of the three – I’m scared that my injury will not be resolved and that I won’t be able to finish the race.

I’m also scared that I won’t be able to raise the funds I’ve committed to raising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Sure it's scary. But is it cancer? No. So I'm doing it anyway.

June 2011. Nine months pre-diagnosis.
(Did I already have leukemia? No one knows.)

Because someone has to.

Let me clarify. When I was in the hospital, being told I had a low chance of survival, being told that the treatment would permanently damage my lungs and possibly my heart, being told that I would never be fast again, I spent hours on the Internet, searching for someone who had defied the odds. I wanted a story of an athlete who had received a bone marrow transplant, but was still able to return to the life he or she had before. I found a lot of BMT survivor stories about chronic illnesses, repeated hospital admissions, kidney, liver and lung damage, permanent disabilities…the lists went on. These people were alive, which was a relief, but competing in athletics? Definitely not.

I was terrified. I needed to be active. I could not comprehend the idea of being sick and disabled for the rest of my life, or even for the next few years. I needed to find a story of someone who had a BMT and returned to competition, someone who got back to the level of training they had before, or perhaps even better. Someone who overcame the fairly discouraging odds. But I couldn’t find it. (Ok, I know you’re going to say Lance Armstrong, but I’m talking about a regular person, not a famous/infamous professional athlete. I read his book in the hospital and was inspired that someone could go through all that and rebuild himself and compete again. His story is amazing and gave me hope. Without venturing into the drug allegations melee, Lance has undoubtedly inspired many people struggling with cancer – myself included – but it is a bit hard to relate to someone at world champion level. I will never be a professional athlete. I just wanted an everyman/woman story. Plus, he didn’t have a bone marrow transplant. Just saying.)

So now I am that story that I couldn’t find. Or at least I want to be.

April 2012. One month post-diagnosis.
Think a triathlon is hard? No. THIS is hard.

I want to show those considering or undergoing a bone marrow transplant, and their families, that there can be a rich, athletic, fulfilling life after such an extreme, harrowing treatment. I want to raise a ridiculous amount of money for blood cancer research and support. And I want to show my kids what it means to never, ever give up.

I invite you all on this visualization exercise with me. Imagine you are a fit, athletic person in your early thirties. You have never smoked, you eat ridiculously healthy food, you are careful about avoiding toxins in your products. Women, imagine that you have a seven-month-old infant and have just worked to get yourself back into shape after pregnancy. That infant is not sleeping. Ever. You are sleep deprived but running every day anyway, because it’s important to you.

Now imagine that you don’t feel quite right on one of your runs. Something is off. You go snowboarding and feel a little dizzy. You get progressively sicker over the next few weeks. You try to run but can’t. You go on antibiotics over and over again. Nothing works. You get blood tests, you get a bone marrow biopsy, you get a broncoscopy, you get sicker. Finally you are admitted to the hospital and they tell you: you have leukemia. Your life explodes. You have to wean your breastfed daughter immediately. Your children cannot visit your ward. You call your mom.

Then they tell you: you have a very aggressive leukemia. Your chances of survival are not good (understatement). Without treatment, they give you weeks to live. Weeks. You need a bone marrow transplant right now. Your brother is not a match.

You have to explain to your three-year-old son what "cancer" means, and that mommy has it.

October 2012. Three months post-transplant.
Hiking with the wig (and a sleeping baby)

You are confined to your room, not even allowed to walk the halls. Your only athletic reprieve is a reclined stationary bike. You put on your iPod every morning and climb on, IV pouring chemo into your veins as you look out the window at smokers gathering below. Despite yourself, you hate them for being able to go outside and for wasting that freedom with something as toxic as smoking. You redirect your anger to the bike.

Now imagine that you survive months of daily vomiting and severe pain and mouth ulcers. Crushing fatigue, anxiety and depression are never far off. At some low points, you feel so awful that you just want to give up and die. But you don’t. You rally. You force yourself to eat. You lose twenty pounds and almost all of your hard-earned muscle. You are so tired you can barely walk one hundred metres. But you do it anyway, because you read somewhere that the more you move, the faster your lungs will recover.

A few months later, weak, skinny, but alive, you start running again. You will not lose this fight. One minute on, one minute off – it’s a shuffle, without doubt. You do it anyway. You go back into the gym to regain that lost muscle. You can’t even do one full push-up. But you do push-ups anyway. Girly-style.

You look at your skinny self in the mirror and envision a stronger you.

A few months after that, you can run a few kilometres. Barely. You get pneumonia. You recover. A few months after that, you push yourself to run a full ten kilometres, in the dead of winter. You get a vicious gastro illness and lose seven pounds. You recover. Then, ten months after the doctors killed you with chemo and brought you back to life, you are at the start line of a fourteen kilometre trail race. And you actually beat some people. You sob.

You are not quite back to where you were, but you’re close.

June 2013. Victory Lap.
12 months post-transplant, racing Emilie's Run 5k (time: 21:32).

Then you set a goal to run a half-marathon. You register and you train hard all summer, but injuries keep happening, one after another. Hamstring, calf, hip flexor. Your mind is ready for the heavy training, but your body is not. Finally you can’t run at all. You have to pull out of the race. You give yourself one day to cry. But there’s no giving up now. So you start swimming, after many years out of the pool. You ride your husband’s mountain bike. You crash. You bleed and feel grateful that you don’t have to worry about platelets and infections like you used to. You get back up.

Now imagine setting a new, slightly crazy goal. A goal to show people that you are not done yet. A goal to show cancer survivors, and especially BMT survivors, what’s possible. A goal that will help others through the same nightmare you just lived. You decide to try something you’ve never done. Something that scares you. You decide to race harder and farther than you’ve ever raced. To go somewhere you have only ever dreamed of racing. Somewhere you never thought possible.

Now stop imagining. This is a true story. This is my story.

I need your help to finish it.

***

The crazy details: 

I have signed up to race the Lavaman Olympic-distance triathlon in Kona, Hawaii with Team in Training to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. On March 30, 2014, I will race 51.5 kilometres (1.5km swim, 40km bike, and 10km run), farther than I have ever raced before (pre- or post-cancer).

If you want to help me achieve this dream and help find better cures and treatments for blood cancers, please consider donating to the cause here.

If you’re not sure how much to donate, consider $1 for each of the 51.5km that I will race. Or just sponsor the bike leg (40km) or run leg (10km). If you can’t afford that, you probably know someone who can. Please pass it on. Spread the message far and wide to everyone you know. Anything helps.

If you cannot donate funds but still want to help, I am looking for a few volunteers who could donate 1-2 hours a week to help me with fundraising – you can live anywhere to do this. As my budget is very tight, I am also seeking donations of new or used training gear (specifically: a bike [lend or donate], race goggles, and tri shorts/top). Air miles donations are also welcome!

Contact: rachel@rachelschmidt.ca.

Start Now

I’ve decided that every cancer survivor should get a trip. It should be a package deal: “We’re sorry to tell you that you have cancer, but there’s more! After you go through hell to get rid of it, we’re giving you an all-expenses paid trip to wherever you want!” It would not make the year or more of hell any better, but it sure would be a nice reward after all that suffering. When I was first diagnosed and dying in the hospital, I remember telling my mom that all I wanted after this nightmare was to go lie on a beach in Hawaii. I would daydream of myself on a beach, cancer-free, cocktail in hand. (Billionaires, take note: cancer survivors deserve free trips.)

I was lucky. I survived and I did get my trip (albeit not for free, and not Hawaii). My husband and I recently returned from ten glorious days in France. It was our tenth anniversary (yes, we married young) and if it weren’t for cancer, we likely would not have done something so extravagant. But since 2012 was without doubt the worst year ever, we were determined to make the bliss of 2013 outweigh it, even if that meant stretching the budget just a tad. It is hard to fully explain the strain that cancer can put on a marriage. While in the end the experience made us stronger and closer, it is an understatement to say that it did not afford us much enjoyable time together.

But we made up for that in France. We spent half the time meandering around Paris, taking copious amounts of pictures and ducking into endless cafes to escape the rain. The other half of our trip was on the French Riviera, soaking up the sun and enjoying the luxury of beach time that didn’t involve sandcastles or water fights. We ate on terraces, practiced our feeble French, and gawked at the yachts in Monaco. I swam in the sea. My husband longingly watched countless cyclists whip by on the coast, and both of us began to ache for some real exercise. Despite that, I literally ate my way through France. Pain au chocolat, cheap wine, croissants, macarons, fresh mussels, baguettes, espresso, goat cheese, crepes with Nutella…there was little I didn’t devour. And to my shock, despite the fact that I could not run, I did not gain a single pound. French women really don't get fat! Apparently paying large amounts of money for small amounts of food and walking for hours each day will do that. (Oh, and the smoking. But not in my case, obviously.)

Being able to celebrate life in this way was by far the best post-cancer gift I could have ever had. My husband and I had not had a real child-free vacation since before we had kids (our oldest is five). My parents generously flew out from Vancouver to care for our children while we were away, and having that much time without work or parenting or doctor’s appointments was so completely foreign to both of us that it took a few days to realize we didn’t have anywhere to be. No babysitter to get home to. No six o’clock morning workouts. No work deadlines. No meetings. No errands. No training logs. And best of all (for me), there were no meals to cook and no bathrooms to clean. I highly recommend it.

Now that we are back, regular life is in full swing. Young kids don’t wait for jet lag. But I feel great. I still get tired, of course, but I cannot tell if that’s still post-chemo fatigue or just the general exhaustion of raising young children while juggling writing, yoga training, a new business, and training five or six days a week (I’m guessing the latter). Compared to last year, or even compared to previous years in graduate school, I don’t even recognize my life. And that’s a great thing.

The only trouble is, I currently can’t run. Not only can I not run fast, I cannot even run across the street. I had to drop out of the half marathon taking place next week that I've been training for all summer. Devastating. About a month ago I was hit with an excruciating pain in my hip that still has not resolved (diagnosed as bursitis). After lamenting about how many injuries I’ve had this summer, my coach surmised that perhaps part of the problem was that my post-cancer body was simply not ready for the mileage and hard workouts I was putting on it. When I mentioned this to my physiotherapist, he shook his head.

“That’s not part of the problem. That’s all of the problem.”

Oh. OK then. But how do you know when your body is ready? His answer: you don't. Frustrated and generally bummed out, I took some rest time, then returned to the basics and hit the gym. Desperate for cardiovascular activity after a few weeks off, I also hit the pool for the first time in years (though admittedly, there is something a bit torturous about jumping into a cold pool at six in the morning). Then I borrowed my husband’s mountain bike and went for a spin. After a couple weeks of this and still no injury resolution, I realized I was turning into a triathlete out of necessity. Interesting.

I’ve always wanted to do a triathlon. I swam competitively in high school and I’ve run competitively for a while, so it sort of made sense (yes, I was fully ignoring the cycling aspect of the sport). And then, of course, there was my Ironman obsession that arose while I was sick. (This came after the Biggest Loser obsession – I told you I watched a lot of TV last year). I read Chrissie Wellington’s book and then started watching Ironman footage, repeatedly, on Youtube. Eventually, I was sold. It's no secret that I like crazy things - especially crazy things that involve amazing feats of human endurance. I wanted to do one. Never mind that at the time I was a waif running eight-minute kilometres, and I hadn’t hit the pool in three years, and I didn't own a bike or a helmet. I could dream.

I've also been an honoured teammate for Team in Training for the last eight months (TnT is the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society). I am supposed to be inspiring the people training for various events who are raising money for blood cancer research, but honestly I think they inspire me even more. I have had so much love and support from these people, and I've decided it is my turn to start giving back. But my bursitis dictates that I can't really train for a marathon right now. My ambition and restlessness, however, dictate that I need to be training for something.

Then I saw that Team in Training is doing a fundraising event in Kona, Hawaii in March. An Olympic-distance triathlon, in the same location as the Ironman World Championships. Interesting again.

I've learned many things from cancer. One of them is to not put off things you've always wanted to do. Don't say "maybe next year," because you might not get a next year. Don't say "we'll do it next time we come here," because you may never be back. Don't wait for ideal conditions. If it's feasible, plan it. Then actually do it. Start now. That's why we went to Paris and didn't wait until we had more money. And that's why I want to do this triathlon and not wait until the timing is better or the situation perfect. This might be my only shot. You just never know.

Of course, there is this teeny, tiny obstacle called a bike. I don’t own one. I used to have a mountain bike that I loved, but it was stolen while we lived in Vancouver. I haven’t owned a bike since and cannot afford to buy one - just a slightly small obstacle in a sport that has a significant cycling component.

But I like to think that I'm not easily defeated. I survived one of the most aggressive forms of leukemia there is. If I can do that, then there is really no good reason why I can’t solve this bike issue, and this injury issue, and do an Olympic distance triathlon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society five months from now. And if I can do that, then there’s no reason why I cannot do a half-Ironman eleven months from now. And if I can do that… Well, maybe we should leave it there for now. (Let's just say a lot of bargains and bribery would have to take place in my household before I could even think of training for a full Ironman. I guarantee you  my husband is shaking his head as he reads this.)

So my obstacles now are finding a road bike, learning how to change a tire, and fundraising the required amount for Team in Training. But honestly, after what I’ve been through, that’s really not much… is it?

I guess I’ll find out. And you'll find out, because I will write about the whole crazy journey.

But you all already know how much I love the crazy.

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P.S. If you are interested in sponsoring me in this event by donating to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, check back on this blog soon for a link to my fundraising page. Thanks!