I was so unsure of myself as a potential racer that day, I walked down the long sidewalk to the start line seriously vacillating between jumping over to the left side, the walkers or staying on the right side the runners. I was concerned someone on a megaphone might see me flailing along and announce "will bib number ( mine) please move out of the way. This side for racers only."
Team Lucca 2005
I finished that race in such a heightened state of emotion. Elation as I passed runners. Happy to have passed allot of runners that I finished and that I ran really fast. Distraught over the number of backs I passed with sad messages of remembrance and honor.
Team Lucca kids 2005
This race with around 30,000 participants now in Sacramento has become not so much a runners race as a yearly event for far too many. It has become an annual rite of springtime, of Mother's day, of hope and promise and one year for me anyway an experience in frustration. The year we ran in a kind of protest over, - where does all this money go? How many more years will be out here doing this? How long will it take to end this thing?
This thing being breast cancer.
And yet it is this monster, this mission, this advocacy that made me a runner.
Ron, Shannon, Kerry and kids 2005
Two years earlier with tears and shock and anger and despair from a women who was the most beautiful, strong, intelligent, funny, sweet, confident, glorious women in the world, came these words -
"Terri do everything you can to take care of yourself. Do everything you can to not have to go through this"
This again being breast cancer, the women my gift from God, mother.
Team Lucca 2006
It was a year of shock and heartbreak. Mom telling me that she had pulled her back out lifting one of her grand kids. A week later, no that was not it, the cancer had moved into her bones.
Doctors telling us we would probably have her through Christmas. Me planning a month long leave of absence from my restaurant manager job in Napa to go home and spend the month of October with her. Mom passing away in September.
Team Lucca 2007
A year of being overwhelmed at times with a grief so big all I could do was brace myself for it's onslaught and run and run and run.
Pounding out the pain on so many days, so many slabs of pavement.
Team Lucca 2008
She was too young. She was full of life, full of plans. We would travel someday to Europe together. We would have lots of time.
I have three incredibly wonderful younger sisters. We are all in our forties and fifties and we all live with the constant, "Who will it be and when?" As a friend told me once regarding wearing a bike helmet, "it's not about if you fall, it's about when". So it seems with the four of us.
Yet we are all runners, we all take pretty darn good care of ourselves and my sister, Katherine an oncology nurse assures us if mom would have been diagnosed today she would still be alive with all the advancements they have made.
Running solo 2009
Still it is not enough. So we keep running. As Melissa Etheridge says in her breast cancer ballad,
"And if you ask me why I am still running, I'll tell you...I run for hope. I run for your mother, your sister, your wife, I run for you and me....I run for life"
Bob and Dale 2010
So come run with me on a Saturday morning, May 7th. I will gladly pay for the first 10 people who call and say they would like to participate with me and I will feed you a delicious brunch after. Please call Glenn at Lucca Restaurant 916.669.5300, and tell him you would like to join me. He is my friend, devoted list keeper and has been a big part of organizing Team Lucca over the past 8 years.
or register yourself at
All my early days of running I ran always only to have that time to be with her.
It amazes me sometimes the actual physical pain I feel in my heart thinking of her.
It amazes me that at fifty one years old and eighteen years later, I long so much to see her to be with her,
for my mother, still.
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