Last Friday was one of those days where you experience a vast range of intense emotions over a short period of time and for hours afterwards they’re all spinning round your head, vying for attention.
It was the day I finished the challenge a friend had set for herself and me in December last year. We were to run, swim or cycle the 192 miles of the Coast to Coast route from St Bees in the Lake District in the northwest of England to Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire in the east. We would do it more or less together – virtually, of course – and we had three months in which to complete it, starting on January 1st.
I decided I would try to run a third of the route and cycle two thirds. I am so slow at running these days but I reckoned running 64 miles and cycling 128 miles over three months was manageable. My friend was running the whole thing. However, once we started, it soon became clear that she would finish in early March. I knew I’d have to up my game to keep up with her.
I’m not going to lie. The running was hard.
I already had a permanent tingling in the balls of my feet and my toes as a result of the nerves being damaged by the chemo I had in 2015 for primary breast cancer. I’ve said before that it’s annoying rather than painful; I am constantly aware of it but it’s just something I live with.
Making things worse, though, was the fact that I think I have developed over the past few months one of the more common side effects of the oral chemotherapy that I’m on as part of my treatment for secondary breast cancer – palmar-plantar or hand-foot syndrome, whereby the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet can become red and sore and numb and swollen and the skin can become dry and blister and peel. Luckily I only have it in my feet and even then I mainly only experience soreness and numbness. It’s more pronounced than the existing tingling (or chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy to give it its officially name) and I’m in no doubt that running exacerbates it. Long walks do too – the friction from walking can result in large and painful blood blisters as the skin is more sensitive than it would usually be.
On one of the secondary support forums I’m on, we refer to it as “cape feet” – “cape” being shorthand for capecitabine, one of the chemo drugs that can cause this particular side effect.
The bottom line is that my feet hurt when I run and the further I run the more they hurt. I therefore decided that I’d do lots of short runs than than fewer, longer runs. If I was meeting a friend for a walk a mile away, for example, I’d run the mile there. I also ran the couple of miles to or back from the hospital a good few times – once after having had blood taken for my latest round of blood tests and another time after having had an MRI scan of my spine, one of the places the cancer has spread to.
Inspired by Parkrun and an associated initiative known as Cancer 5k Your Way, I saw 5k as a good distance to aim for if I was feeling up to it. Parkruns are free, timed Saturday morning 5k runs organised by local volunteers that take place in parks and open spaces around the country and indeed the world. I was a huge fan before the pandemic-related restrictions put a halt to organised outdoor sporting events and, of course, to so much more.
“Cape feet” undoubtedly affects my quality of life. However, as long as I was still able to run, there was no way I was not going to complete the running part of this challenge. I’ve stopped looking at how long it takes me to do stuff now and I’m just grateful that I’m still able to do them. I’ve embraced the concept of “it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”. Plus, I’d treated myself to a new pair of running shoes and bluetooth headphones!
To encourage myself to get out there and run, I’d been listening to podcasts. Given the foot issue, I realised something more motivational was needed. So I put together two playlists on Spotify – one is called “Mo Is Dancing” (I’m Mo) and the other is “Women in Country”. I love both and it’s always hard to decide which to listen to.
Talking of motivation, I remember on one occasion standing in my running kit outside the hospital after a scan, my feet already throbbing. I was thinking that I really didn’t feel like running home. Then I thought “what if this were going to be your last run?”. That did it, and I set off. Some people say you should live every day as if it were your last. I’ve always thought that was kind of daft because that would mean every day would be exactly the same – and potentially very boring or very exhausting depending on how you’d chosen to spend it. However, it did come in handy that day at least.
It also helped that another online breast cancer support group I’m a member of was holding a challenge of its own throughout the month of February – for its members collectively to virtually walk round the coast of the UK. In addition, my company was running a February Fitness challenge, with around 250 teams from around the world all competing to clock up the biggest number hours of exercise over the month. All the runs and bike rides I did for the Coast to Coast counted towards those challenges too.
In case you’re wondering, running doesn’t seem to cause long-term damage. You do have to put up with some sleepless nights after you’ve been on a run that’s longer than a couple of miles. The symptoms recede to a large degree after a few days of rest (ie no running or long walks) but I have to be honest, the discomfort even when I haven’t been running does still cause the odd disturbed night.
I kept up with my friend by putting in some miles on my bike (mostly outdoors, but there were also a few indoor sessions) whenever she got too far ahead. We decided to run the last few miles at the same time so we’d finish more or less together. We video-called each other a few minutes before our agreed start time and then set off, me in south London on my own and my friend in south Wales with two of her lovely three daughters. We video-called again once we’d finished. It was all quite exciting! And the medal you get for finishing is rather smart.
The challenge was organised by a company called My Virtual Medal (myvirtualmedal.co.uk). You log your miles on a website that tracks where you are on the route. My friend and I had virtual tea and cake together in some lovely coffee shops and stayed in some very nice hotels along the way! Maybe one day we’ll visit some of these places in real life. I also dropped in for a virtual coffee with a friend who lives not far off the route as it enters Yorkshire! I did in fact call her up and we had a good old chat.
It couldn’t have ended in a nicer way. Towards the end of my run, on Tooting Common, my local stomping ground, I bumped into a friend who was also out running. His wife is a senior intensive care nurse at the hospital where I’m being treated. She’s been in the thick of it during the pandemic. Her husband and I hadn’t seen each other in person for a while and we stopped to chat.
Mid-catch up, a dog runs up to me and drops a ball at my feet. I recognise her immediately. It’s Ruby, our friends’ and neighbours’ beautiful black labrador. As it happens, I am chief ball thrower for Ruby when we’re out on walks with our friends. She’d clearly recognised me and wanted to play.
Her “master”, our friend Dave, wasn’t far away. How could I say no? I laughed and kicked the ball for Ruby while half-running the last few hundred metres of my run.
Coincidentally, Dave knows Robin’s Hood Bay really well and told to enjoy myself while I was there!
Dave is a good few years younger than me. He’s been living with Parkinson’s disease for ten years. I’ve mentioned Dave before in various posts. I had the pleasure of joining him and a group of friends last summer on yet another of his fundraising events for Parkinson’s UK – this time walking the Hadrian’s Wall Way during one of those periods when the pandemic restrictions were lowered. Dave’s a bit of a legend in the Parkinson’s community and in the world of darts, having been a presenter of Sky Sports Darts for many years. Check him out on Twitter at @daveclarktv.
While I was writing this post, Dave dropped off a prize – a memento from Robin’s Hood Bay (see photo) – for having completed the challenge. I love it!
Dave and I are among each other’s biggest fans, supporting and admiring each other through adversity. It was therefore lovely to bump into him and Ruby. However, it also felt quite strange, given that just a few minutes before, I’d been standing in front of a bench a few hundred metres away with tears streaming down my face.The bench is dedicated to the memory of a good friend of one of my sons, who took his own life last October. He was 21.
I’d known the bench was there but this was the first time I’d seen it. I’d looked for it before while out running but in the wrong place and coming across it at that point really took me by surprise. The bench was covered in flowers and looked beautiful. I had this most tragic of events in my mind* when I bumped into my running friend and Dave and Ruby soon afterwards. It all felt quite surreal.
I’ll finish by saying that it was good to complete the Coast to Coast challenge early. It meant I was able to finish it before I get the results of my latest set of scans. I had an MRI scan of my spine (the first in almost a year) and a near full-body PET CT scan the week before last (the first since last September). I get the results tomorrow. As we know, there’s no point trying to second guess the results. That said, if they show progression and I have to change treatment, it’ll be better to head into the next phase with a shiny new medal than with 60 plus miles of running and cycling left to go.
*If you’re in the UK and you or someone you know is struggling, you or they can get help from organisations such as The Samaritans (https://www.samaritans.org/) or CALM (https://www.thecalmzone.net/about-calm/what-is-calm/). It’s only by encouraging people – and men in particular – to reach out and seek help that we’ll make inroads towards lowering the numbers of those who see suicide as their only option.
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