I Run These Towns

I was in love with my job in 2013 and frequently traveled around the state to meet with communities I represented. At the end of January I headed to Southeast Michigan to present to a group of local government managers (and while I shouldn't pick favorites this group was definitely my favorite). It was an unseasonably warm January day, but it was really windy with promises that the temps would be dropping.  I drove home in the driving wind, hands gripping the steering wheel the whole time. It was a harrowing drive, and I was so relieved to finally pull into my driveway. I walked into the house to find my usually stoic husband in tears. His father had passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack. I was in disbelief that out of nowhere my seemingly healthy, only 57-year-old father-in-law was no longer with us. We got back into the car and I drove back to Southeast Michigan to my mother-in-law's house.  Those days are a blur, and I remember the angst of losing someone I loved too, ...

I was still living in the normal years when I ran my first marathon , the Detroit Free Press Marathon, in 2010. Running a marathon takes a lot of time and energy, and I felt great overall. At that time my Crohn's was less of an issue than my knee. My sports medicine doctor gave me a cortisone injection the week of the race. He said it would hurt, but my running it wouldn't cause any irreparable harm. I became a marathoner on a chilly October morning in 2010. My body felt strong, and while I was living with Crohn's, I was crushing it.  Then came the hernia. Hernias are something old people get, right? In the summer of 2011 I started having pain in my lower abdomen attached to a little knot that was super painful. It was right where the button for my jeans landed, so wearing jeans was really uncomfortable. My West Virginia Mountaineers were playing LSU at home in football, so my husband, brother and I converged on my parents' house to go to the game. We didn't have ti...