· Date: Sunday July 7, 2019
· Where: Pierre, SD to Mitchell, SD
· Total Distance Covered: 156 miles
· Running Partner: Tyler (Guyler)
This was our fourth or fifth day without a van. Today, I was in the minivan that was acting as one of the temporary replacements to the larger van. Splitting up the big van into two smaller cars wasn’t my favorite. I missed the environment of riding in a big group and talking with everyone. It felt more like a team effort in the big van and this was how we had started the trip. Not being one who likes to change, I didn’t like the new dynamics of the team with these vans. On the other side though, those of us in the smaller cars got to spend more quality time together. By the end of a day in one of the cars, everyone knew each other extremely well.
Tyler and I, who had been friends since the first day of orientation were finally running together today. I remember walking to target with him because he forgot a towel and he told me he was missing three weddings this summer to do 4K. He had a huge family and was running for one of his close friends from college.
Early into the Summer, it came up in conversation with Tyler that I wanted to improve my mile time. Since then, he has been motivating me and acting as my coach to do so. There had already been a few times where we would put in extra miles at the end of shorter days to work on speed and get a quality workout in. Today we were excited because we could work on my mile time without doing any extra miles. This was also the first big workout that we had planned in our project together. Today would set the foundation for what we were calling Project:Return and had been talking about since our time back in Austin, Nevada on Day Six. We were going to take advantage of finally being partners and we had twelve miles to do it.
Tyler and I warmed up, ran sprints, intervals, and challenged each other up hills. In the last few miles, my muscles were feeling this different approach to running. For the past few weeks on 4K, most of my miles were at a leisurely pace with no type of workout involved. We were just running to run, which I liked. But changing it up was a nice change for my mind and body. I hadn’t done any kind of runs like this since before 4K started.
At one point, Tyler and I were sprinting. Not out of choice but because we had to. As we approached an older barn and house set in a small grove of trees, we noticed a sign. It read “Beware of the Dog.” This got us excited because the house meant that it was the end of the day and we were getting closer to civilization. For the whole day, we had run by fields with hay and no trees. It was all straight roads today with long sections of flat pavement and long sections of rolling hills. All we saw were passing cars. So, the fact that there was a house, even with a “Beware of the Dog” sign, was exciting. Regretfully, this probably caused us to disregard the sign. We also didn’t see or hear any dog, so we figured the sign was outdated. But as we approached the area, a big guard dog came out of nowhere and stood its ground in the middle of the road. Tyler and I stopped running and tried to make some noise to scare it away. But it just stared at us and barked. There were only fields around us and nowhere to go so we had no choice but to keep running straight forward if we wanted to meet up with the van. We went slow, and it backed to the oncoming lane. Tyler and I were as far to the right as we could get and as we got closer, we sprinted by. Soon though, the dog started chasing us. I think maybe the dog thought it was a game. I didn’t like this game. Tyler and I booked it in high gear for about an eighth of a mile or more before we thought we were far enough away. As we looked back, the dog gave up running but stared us down until we were out of sight. That was the first time I truly was chased by a dog while running. As crazy as it sounds, being chased by dogs is something runners talk about and I couldn’t be happier than to have experienced that with Tyler.
I remember talking about our girlfriends, our families, and healthcare. Tyler and a few others on the team had been applying for med schools during the night when everyone else was sleeping. So, we liked to talk about similar things.
Tyler also used to work on the transport team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Ironically, he was working while I was being treated there. One day I was telling Tyler how after my retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (RPLND), which was my biggest surgery and the conclusion of my treatment, I walked a 5K in the hospital. The doctors and nurses told me I needed to walk a lot to get my bowels back to normal and resume my diet. I also hated sitting still no matter how painful it was. So, I walked and walked and walked, pushing the IV pole throughout my admission. My parents would take turns walking laps around the unit with me. Each day I would walk more laps and build up my endurance. By the last day in the hospital, I had finally walked a 5K, 3.1 miles of laps around the unit, in one day. The nurses told me it was a record and the most anyone had ever walked after an RPLND. Tyler said he had heard about me. He said that nurses were talking about some young guy on a post-surgical floor who was walking a lot. It’s crazy how our lives crossed paths before we knew each other. It’s crazier to think Tyler may have heard about me before 4K too. Tyler may have transported me throughout the hospital, or we may have passed each other in the hallway, but we didn’t have an actual conversation until 4K. It sure is a small world.
As our minivan finished up our miles for the day, we came across a lake with a town beach. In true 4k fashion, we pulled over, took our shoes off, and ran right in. It was ice cold and felt amazing to soothe the muscles after a long day. It was even more amazing to escape from the horse flies that had been swarming us all day. I was getting tired of swatting and hitting them away. After swimming and drying in the sun we finished up our miles and arrived at the host for the night.
Soon after we arrived, all the vehicles and the rest of the team arrived at the host as well. We all drove to the Corn Palace, a few miles away, to do a Facebook live event that was Becca’s idea. This palace was a building that had siding made from corn kernels. Each year, people would redesign the siding for a different mosaic theme. This year’s theme was our veteran’s and military. Inside the building was a basketball court with a souvenir and gift shop on the court. Everything was corn themed and outrageously priced. But all I could think of was my corn loving sister Aly, who I knew would eat this place up. Literally.
I don’t think anyone on the team knew what the purpose of this building was. But the Corn Palace is the only one in the world. We promoted our cause, explained where we were, and tried to further increase our funds for Ulman. I think a few people passing by gave us donations as well.
Tonight, we had another “Why” meeting. This was like the meeting we had back in Salt Lake City, but with a twist. Rather than reexplain why we chose to do 4K and what motivated us, we had to explain how this has changed over the past few weeks. It was a 4K tradition. The group had a consensus that we weren’t just running for the people in our personal lives or to honor our donors and their loved ones. We were running for each other, for all our causes and to connect communities impacted by cancer. We were running to raise funds, awareness, and support for the Ulman Foundation. Although all of us were brought here with unique stories and situations, often with the “No one understands my situation,” mantra, we all understood each other. We appreciated each other. We were family. We were supported. We were loved. Our “Why” had all changed in ways we never could have predicted. When looking at our division we had experienced in the first few days, especially in Delta, Utah, this was incredible.
As one last bonding exercise with Becca, we all played various “minute to win it” games and then called it a night. I don’t even remember who won or what most of the games were. I do remember having more fun than I expected.
Finally, as the meeting ended, everyone went to bed. I made a cappuccino from the machine in the church kitchen and worked on my blog. At this point, I was desperately behind on it. The task of doing this at the end of the night was beginning to tire me out. I wanted to make sure each post counted and had the full depth of what I wanted to share. I didn’t want to publish a half-finished post. Even then, I knew that I wasn’t achieving this. But the lack of sleep that I was getting and the technical troubles I was having with Wi-Fi and my keyboard made it difficult to post. I knew I had to find a different solution; this would be the third night in a row with only five hours of sleep. To top it off, by my calculations and taking into consideration the extra miles I had run with Evan and Tyler, I was at eighty-five individual miles of running in the past week alone. I was tired.
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