I Know This Has Been Done Before

...but when you have cancer, it feels like you are the first person in the world who ever had to deal with it.

And, now, years later, poised to do my first Ironman, and to raise funds for blood cancers , I feel like I am the first person doing it. And I am excited, and a bit self-conscious.

Having cancer can be stigmatizing. I had a hard time telling people what was going on with me. It took me weeks, and I had already had chest surgery, before I could tell my parents. Strange, but I felt ashamed.

And after I survived treatment, my sense of shame lingered, mixed with my happiness that I was alive.  Truth be told, I am still not totally comfortable telling people about my medical history. Part of that is that same sense of stigma.

I was a top level tennis player before I got cancer.  It has taken years for me to find my way back into that athletic persona in a way that makes sense to me. Now I finally  want to do something with it. I spent years after cancer lifting weights; even kickboxing, to show myself, and the world that I was strong and no longer vulnerable. I did build alot of muscle/armor, but I didn't feel like an athlete. I thought that being an athlete was over, too much chemo and radiation.

In the last five years I have become a husband and a father. This has given me huge amounts of strength...and motivation...and a more acute awareness of the stakes that are involved in surviving cancer...long term.  Endurance is the key. The ability to last. As in life, so in Ironman. And I am once again more willing to take risks, to see what I can do. And to accept my limitations, as long as I am sure that I have reached them. And I have become an athlete again.

Triathlon is a beautiful and addictive sport. I have dreamed of competing in Ironman since I was a teenager watching the Ironwar on TV and then going outside to ride my steel Miele in my speedos. I never believed I could really do it though.

It has taken many years to get here. I am ready to start my first Ironman campaign. I hope you join me as I go along, and help out by donating to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I am sure that it is because of donations like yours that I am writing this blog now.