It's been a while

I have been remiss in blogging for a couple of milestones.
First and foremost, I ran my best 10K time Feb. 25 at the Charles Harris Run for Leukemia 10K.
This race starts at Tucker High School in Tucker, Ga., and ends at what is now Druid Hills Middle School (I'll always call it Shamrock Middle School!) in Decatur, Ga.
It's a point-to-point race that ends about 2 miles from my house. What I really like about this race is 1) it's fairly flat and 2) because it is so close to my house, I invite my friends over for a pancake breakfast after the race.
This year, however, I was not really looking forward to the race.
I hadn't trained well for the 10K. I only ran one training run at 4 miles in the past two months. And I hadn't run that much at all during the week. Not good.
On top of that, my friends all had prior plans, so no one was coming over for breakfast afterward.
In essence, I was going to run this race on my own, and I didn't expect to run it all that well.
So imagine my surprise when I got close to the finish line and saw I was about to turn in my best 10K time in three years!
I bested last year's best 10K time (the Big Peach Sizzler on Labor Day 2011) by two minutes!
My Charles Harris time was satisfying for another reason.
This year's Charles Harris happened to fall on the same day as six years ago, when I had just been diagnosed with cancer.
I was diagnosed Feb. 22, 2006. It was a Wednesday. My breast surgeon called me on my cell phone at 9:30 pm.
There is NO good news when your doctor calls you at home at night. Trust me.
The next two to three days were spent crying, screaming, being fearful, and, most of all, sleepless.
I literally had not slept in two days when I decided to go ahead and run the Charles Harris 10K that year. I had already signed up for the race. And God love my friends who rallied around me and ran it with me.
That race was 45 degrees and POURING down rain. I don't mean a light drizzle. I mean something that felt like a monsoon. And Jessica, Erin and others ran it right there with me.
We had the pancake breakfast after that race, and I was grateful for the distraction.
Fast forward to 2012.
Feb. 22 fell on a Wednesday, and the Charles Harris fell on a Saturday, just as it did six years ago.
What a difference six years can make.
I won't say that I didn't think about where I was 2006, but really I felt how far I'd come.
During the race, I did think about my friend Danica.
Danica survived breast cancer, but all of the cancer treatment caused her to get leukemia. She died from her cancer treatment. She was a beautiful mother of three young children, one of whom I know was too young to remember her.
As I ran, I thought of her. I felt her presence. And I hope I honored her with my run and the money it raises for leukemia research.
It's been a while, my friends, but I'm starting to feel like I was before cancer. It has been a long road.
It's good to be back.