October 4th - October 9th

Our Wedding Anniversary was very quiet, we did nothing that evening for the first time in 4 years, and spent the evening at home together. On the 6th of October mum and dad came over to take me over to see my new homeopath Sue D for my first appointment. She had started me on the banerji protocols prior to surgery and so I was now wanting to talk through what she could give me for the radiotherapy as well as talking through my emotions and how I was feeling. It was good to finally meet her and have the remedies that would get me through the next 6.5 weeks for treatments.

The weekend however was very abnormal with heading down to London for Lel to do the Royal Parks Half Marathon. The dogs were collected by mum and dad on the Friday before we set off on the 9:30 train on the Saturday. We were booked in to a hotel near Hyde Park to allow us to walk to the park the following day. I had wanted to avoid tubes as much as possible and, apart from getting across London we managed this pretty well. We got down there on the train, got the tube to Kensington High Street, walked about 500m in the rain to our hotel, checked in then, having researched vegan / organic cafes in the area we found one about half a mile away from the hotel where we headed for lunch. It was run by Iranians and the food was dreamy. Following this we went for a wander round Kensington Gardens and to Harrods where we did the obligatory Christmas shopping! We also found a fabulous health food store that made us both very excited. We headed back to the room for a sit down, I was still tired in the afternoon from surgery and we had been up early, then walked a long way in London so we chilled out for a while whilst discussing what to do for dinner. We decided to head back to the food store, buy some hot food and take it back to the room to eat watching Strictly, allowing us an early night and not spending the earth on it. The plan worked and we ate dinner sat on the hotel bed watching the show. Cheap and cheerful!

The following morning after a small breakfast - toast, a banana and a cup of tea for Lel, a free from pitta and home made almond butter that I had brought with me for me we headed across to the park. Check out wasn’t until 12 so we had time to come back over after the race so long as she was quick! No pressure there then! As usual with these things, there feels to be an age waiting around at the start line and we had been over early as all the literature advised to be at the start line in plenty of time. We both really liked the fact that I could be by the start (or at least the tunnel that fed to the start) unlike the Great North Run where she always got on the Metro and I just met her at the end. I waited with her until her colour had fed to set off down the road that was barricaded off. We had worked out that she was in a slower vest colour than her intended time so she would have to work to get to the front of that field in order to let herself run at the speed she wanted. The last time she had done a 13 miler in prep, she had done 13.5 miles in just over 2 hrs so she was aiming for a P.B. of under 2hrs.  I had an app on my phone that, once she had completed the 1st km would show me where she was and how fast she was going. The minute she showed up I knew she was going too fast to maintain that time and hoped that she wouldn’t burn out in desperation to achieve a good time.  As she continued her mile speed slowed to just a bit quicker than she usually runs at and I knew that she would be fine. Her first split time at 5 km was exceptionally good, I guess that was the first km that had done that, as she got to her second split, it settled to a good pace. I had headed over to where I knew they were running back into the park and settled myself opposite the Pancreatic Cancer Research (who she was running for) cheering point as I thought I would see her there. I totally missed her and later figured that being opposite them was not a good idea as she had gone over to them to high 5 them so had been on the other side of the path to where I was.. Oops. I decided therefore I wasn’t going to miss her next time and as the runners ran back past where I was, I stood on a bench to look for her. The app showed where about they were and I was looking down the line of runners when I heard Lel shout ‘Ruth’, I looked down and she was running past the bench looking very fresh still.  Prior to the race I had decided that I wanted to go and see the Peter Pan statue as I had never seen this and thought I might be able to do this, then scoot across the park and see her before she finished. I headed down the serpentine at great speed to do this, then cut across the park to where they were heading over. She had no idea that I would be there and there were very few people cheering runners on at this point so when I shouted ‘go for it Lel’ she looked really startled! I then set myself a challenge to make it down to the last stretch to see her on the home straight before she finished and tried to speed walk it back. I got to the gate just after she had gone through it, had I been able to run I would have seen her again so I was a little disappointed with myself. We had arranged to meet back at the Royal Albert Hall but I thought I would try my luck at finding her in the sea of runners at the finish line - after 4 failed phone calls, I found a very sweaty but proud Lel.  She didn’t know her finishing time at that point as we had been doing it via my app (her running vest had a chip in it that linked to some fancy system) and when I told her that she was 1hr 50mins and 22 seconds she was over the moon.  Talking about smashing your PB. I was so so proud of her. We then had to hot foot it back to the hotel to get her changed, me pack the cases and check out at 12 on the dot.

Prior to coming to London I had arranged with a colleague from London to meet up for a coffee and a chat. After working with her on opposing sites for 4 years I thought it was high time we met. She had suggested the Whole Food Cafe in Covent Garden and we made our way over there for lunch thinking we could hold the table until she arrived. It was busier than we thought but we had an amazing lunch, dessert and 2 drinks then she arrived! It was fabulous to finally meet her and have a good chat. I think we both agreed that we have definitely made a proper friend there. A good end to a good weekend. We then headed back across London to Kings Cross for the 5pm train home. I was hoping that I was not meant to be overly rested for my first session of radiotherapy as I certainly wasn’t.