Yesterday, I completed something that I honestly did not think I would be able to do. I finished the Two Face 10K race event in North Park. I haven’t run consistently since 2021, which is when I switched over to just hiking.

However, my five-year mark is coming up on October 2, and I felt like I had something to prove to myself. Honestly, I wanted to really tell stage four breast cancer to fuck all the way off. I still do. The five year mark is a really big deal to me. I know so many of my stage 4 breast cancer patients who never got to see their five year mark.

I didn’t really tell anyone I was doing this until it was closer to the race for a couple of reasons. If I didn’t manage to complete this, I didn’t want everyone to know that I tried this and failed. I also didn’t want anyone to leave comments for me saying I’m inspirational or brave, something like that. Because I’m not inspirational or brave.

I’m pigheaded.

My stomach had been really plaguing me the weeks leading to the race. The day before the race, I had gone to urgent care due to extreme GI problems. I truly did not think I would be able to do this race. What really got me to the finish line (literally) was a good friend of mine signed up for the race, so we would do it together. Plus, the weather was actually nice and cool the other day. I had been training for months in just high heat and humidity, so this weather felt magical.

I don’t think I could have done this without my friend there along the way. When we started the second half of the race, the trail portion, I wiped out and fell. Luckily, it wasn’t a bad fall and just caused some superficial scrapes on the side of my leg. Nothing bad, thankfully.

The 10K trail race actually was almost 7.5 miles, which I was not aware of prior to race day. Haha. I fought like absolutely hell all those 7 miles. There were curse words, and more importantly, it was quality spent with my good friend as we battled together.

When her and I crossed the finish line, I had a group of friends and my fiancee cheering so loudly for me. It was a pretty amazing moment for me. My friends, who had already finished the race, waited for me! I did find out later that at one point, they were wondering if I had maybe gotten eaten by a bear. Honestly, that’s fair. We were supposed to keep a 20 minute pace but ended up being a 23 minute pace.

I did it, though. I finished both races, even though I really didn’t think I could do it.

My five-year mark is now less than two months away, and I got to send a giant fuck you to metastatic breast cancer. Cancer has taken so fucking much from me, but yesterday, I was able to take a swing back at cancer.