Catching Up

The past few months have been a blur of travel and races. What would have been probably seven separate blog posts in the past will now be one, filled mostly with pictures. Here’s an update on what I have been up to since May.

 

GOTR 5K
Twice a year Girls on the Run San Diego hosts a 5K to celebrate the end of the season for the girls. Although Tara and I are no longer coaching, I am still on the Board of Directors and we attend the 5K both to support the organization and also to exhibit at the expo for Glam Runner. The race is always fun but this year’s race was extra special because we were brought up on the stage (with a red carpet entrance!) to be thanked for our fundraising of $8000 for the organization through the whole Tutugate ordeal.

 

 

Girls on the Run San Diego 5K

 

 

Even Our Husbands Know #tutusrock

 

 

Self Magazine Visit
Speaking of Tutugate, a few weeks after the GOTR 5K our Executive Director Amy and I had a meeting with the new Editor in Chief and the Director of PR at Self Magazine. Back when the whole media storm was going on, the previous editor and I had made plans to meet up the next time I was in NY. Soon after we planned that though she was replaced by a new editor and I thought the meeting probably wouldn’t happen. I reached out to the new editor though and told her I’d be in NY for work later that month and asked if she would she still like to honor the meeting and she said yes. Great! I invited Amy to join me for the meeting and we met with her to talk about GOTR, what the organization is about and how it was started, what the impact of the program is locally and nationally, and suggested some ways that GOTR and Self could work together. Not sure what if anything will come of that, but hopefully something will.

 

 

Selfie at the Self Magazine Office

 Posing With "My" Issue

 

 

Feature in Self Magazine

 

 

 

San Diego Century Ride
Hot on the heels of my NY trip (aka I actually had to leave a day early to make the race) I was back in San Diego for the San Diego Century Ride. This would be my second time completing the metric century distance (67 miles) and I committed to this race to keep myself accountable with bike training for my big triathlon in July. My friend Shannon and my cousin Giselle joined me for the ride and we had a great time. Just like the last time I did this race, somewhere around mile 20 or 30 I thought “I should do the real century distance (100 miles) sometime!” BUT … about 20 miles later I was pretty much over it and the ride couldn’t end fast enough. Distance riding doesn’t seem as physically exhausting as marathon running, but you are on the bike for SO long. SO SO long. Ugh.

 

 

San Diego Century Metric Course

Halfway Done With The Ride

Best Part Of The Day

 

 

GOTR OC
The day after the San Diego Century I slept in – nope, no I didn’t. I was up at the crack of dawn again to drive up to Orange County with Tara to attend the inaugural GOTR OC 5K. We had been asked to come up on behalf of GOTRSD and Glam Runner and it was hard to say no. The event was great and we ended up having fun and were happy we came. So glad we were able to support our sister chapter!

 

 

With The GOTROC Leaders

 

 

Maui
The weekend following the GOTR OC 5K though I finally got some rest. David and I went to Maui for a week to celebrate my birthday and our one year anniversary (a month early). We had an extremely low key week which was exactly what I needed. Aside from going to the beach, shopping, eating, and relaxing, the only big adventure we went on was ziplining. No road to Hana, no sunrise at Haleakala. Those are fun but are pretty tiring since they involve so many hours in the car, and we’ll save doing those things again for a future trip.

 

 

View From Our Condo

One Of Many Gorgeous Beaches

Dinner at Mama's Fish House For My Birthday

 

Vegas
What would my life be if it wasn’t going from one trip directly to another? A couple days after getting back from Maui I was headed to Vegas to work a tradeshow. Why yes, this would be my fourth time in Vegas this year. That's about three times too many!

 

 

Appetizer At Michael Minna - Seriously?

 

 

San Diego International Triathlon (SDIT)
The weekend after I came back from Vegas I had my second triathlon of the year. I had competed in SDIT three years ago and liked the course and thought it would be a nice intermediate length race between the Spring Sprint in May and Barb’s Race in July. Fortunately, in this race I didn’t freak out in the swim as much as I did in the Spring Sprint, and I made it back to the shore without a near panic attack. My dad was also visiting for the weekend and the night before the race we went to the Padres game. Pre-race carbo loading with garlic fries? Sure, why not!

 

 

San Diego International Triathlon

(1000m swim, 30K bike, 10K run)

Twinsies! We're So Cute ;o)

Getting OUT Of The Water

 

 

Selfie With My Dad At The Padres Game

 

 

Coronado 15K
The next weekend after SDIT was 4th of July weekend and Christina came to visit and we ran the Coronado 15K. This would be my 6th time running this race in the 7 years I have spent in San Diego. (I was up in the Bay Area one 4th of July and ran a race up there instead.) I love the 15K distance because it’s long enough to feel more challenging than a training run, but short enough that it doesn’t warrant any stress like a half marathon.

 

 

Showing Off Our American Pride

Padres vs Giants Game

 

 

Next Up
This coming weekend I’ll be heading up to the Bay Area for Barb’s Race – a women’s only 70.3 distance triathlon aka a half-Ironman. To say I’m nervous about the race would be an understatement.  I feel completely undertrained and have probably only put in about half as many workouts as most training plans recommend. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I’ve been out of own NINE times in the past four months and I can’t swim or bike on the road and often don’t have time for longer runs when I'm traveling. With my 12 ½ hour day thanks to my commute I also don’t have time to workout morning and night which is pretty common for triathletes. I’ve done what I can though and hope that I’m in good enough shape to get to the finish line. If you want to track me on Saturday you can do so here. Wish me luck!

 

 

My Bare Bones Training Schedule
That I only completed about 75% of

Green = out of town!

 

 

 

 

 

Capitol Hill Advocacy

The past several months have been a whirlwind of travel for me and I’m way behind on my blog and can never seem to find the time to update it. In between traveling I’ve been trying to train for my big triathlon in July as much as I can, and have been kept very busy making tutus. In my last post I talked about the Spring Sprint Triathlon, my first triathlon back after a 2 ½ year hiatus. That race came right on the heels of a trip to Vegas for work … and believe it or not later that evening after the race I was back on a plane again headed to DC.

 

 

Spring Sprint Triathlon Complete!

 

 

Red-Eye Sleep Mask from JetBlue

In early May David and I attended an advocacy event called “Head to the Hill” put on by the National Brain Tumor Society. According to the event website:

On Tuesday, May 6th, brain tumor advocates from across the country converged on Capitol Hill to share their stories and advocate for public policy issues that are important to the brain tumor community. This year’s fourth-annual Head to the Hill Advocacy Day was our largest to date, with 135 advocates from 30 states attending 156 meetings with members of Congress or their staff.

This event sounded like a great way to get involved and make a difference in the brain tumor community, and also gave us a chance to visit David’s family. I managed to talk David’s mom into attending as well so the Allens were 3 of the 135 attendees and represented California and West Virginia.  The event started out on Monday afternoon with a training session on the three keys issues that we would be advocating for.

 

 

Brain Tumor Advocacy Issues

 

1. Oral Chemotherapy Parity – ensuring affordability of oral chemotherapy, the standard of care for brain tumors (more here)
2. Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Reauthorization Act – a bill to improve pediatric cancer research and information (more here)
3. Appropriations for Medical Research and Drug Approval – ensuring support for brain tumor research and drug development (more here)

 

The following day we would be broken up into a group of California constituents who would be visiting Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and then later California would be broken up into several smaller groups (because there were so many of us from California - go California!) to visit our representatives for our regional areas. In each meeting that we had scheduled there would be a set flow to the meeting with assigned roles for each topic. In the larger California group there were more of us than there were roles so I didn't speak, but in the smaller group I volunteered for the role of talking about the oral chemo parity act since that was one that is personally relevant to me. In our training we spent time going over the issues, assigning roles, practicing our parts, and role playing.

 

 

Advocacy Training Day

 

That night after the training we headed over to Nationals Park to meet up with David’s parents, brother, and brother's fiancé to watch the Nationals vs Dodgers game. It had been a beautiful sunny day … up until the moment we stepped out of the Metro station. It started raining, then raining harder, then pouring. Such a shame because we had great seats! We watched three innings before they stopped the game for a rain delay (We were soaked by this point!) and after waiting a bit to see if the rain was going to let up we ended up going home. We found out later that after a 3 hour delay (?!?!) they ended up continuing the game and finishing it. Um, sounds miserable.

 

 

Rainy Nats Game

 

The next morning we were up bright and early to meet everyone for breakfast before heading off to Capitol Hill. So much for my plans of running around DC... oh well! We were starting the day with a group photo on the steps of the Capitol before breaking up into our smaller groups and heading off to our meetings.

 

 

Headed to the Hill!

Car2Go Sighting!(My morning transportation to the train station in SD)

 

 

California Constituents

Head to the Hill Advocacy Group

 

Our first meeting was with Diane Feinstein’s office. A San Francisco legend!! She had a lot of San Francisco photos and memorabilia around her office which was really neat. She also had a bowl of California prunes, which we later saw was a staple in the offices of many of the California representatives. Who knew prunes represented California?

 

 

California Prunes - Did the CA Raisins retire?

For those who didn't grow up in CA in the 80s,
check out this video for reference to the CA Raisins

 

In this first meeting I felt perfectly fine until we got to the part of our presentation where someone shared a personal story. This woman in our group talked about her own personal battle with brain cancer, showed pictures of friends she had lost, and also said “I know that this is something that is going to kill me someday”. (She didn’t say this in our practice session the day before.) It took about everything I had not to burst into tears. That is something I often think about, but rarely say since I don't event want to acknowledge the chance of it. Hearing someone else say it so matter-of-factly hit too close to home. I thought that nobody noticed my eye-watering moment in the meeting, but it turns out that the woman who was talking did. After we left the office she came up to me and said something along the lines of – “Hey, I’m sorry that bothered you. You know that I only said that to get to them right? I don’t believe that is the truth. Doctors don’t always know everything. No one can predict when you’re going to die”. As a long term survivor (9 years I think?) I found her words fairly comforting, but I was still shaken up a bit. But … we moved on with our meetings and I kept it together.

 

 

Outside Diane Feinstein's Office

 

Well … I kept it together until one of our smaller group meetings with Susan Davis, our representative for San Diego. In most meetings we attended David was sitting by my side, but for this meeting for some reason he ended up across the table from me. During the meeting I was going through my part talking about oral chemotherapy and how it was something that I was on for a year, and how as someone with an inoperable brain tumor it was my only choice of treatment, and sadly there aren’t really many other treatment options. As I was talking about this I looked across the table at David and out of nowhere burst into tears. The gravity of my situation suddenly hit me, and I just lost it. I tried to finish my part but was sobbing through the whole thing. SOBBING! What a mess. Hey, at least I came through as passionate right? So embarrassing … We had one more meeting after that and luckily I had everything back under control and didn’t cry again, although I’m sure I had the rest of my group nervous about my emotional instability.

 

 

Busy Day of Meetings!

 

At the end of the day we had five successful meetings. In each meeting we found out that the representative either already supported what we were advocating for, or the staff member we talked to seemed engaged and interested in the issues we were talking about. After the day ended David and I talked about whether or not we thought our meetings made a difference, and we both felt that they did.

 

 

Team Allen Advocates

 

A few weeks after the advocacy event we received an email from the event organizer confirming our speculations. A number of co-sponsors were added to the Cancer Drug Coverage Parity Act and the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Reauthorization Act soon after our meetings! For example, the first act only gained 4 co-sponsors between January – May 2014, but 6 more co-sponsors were added in the days following our meetings. Wow!

 

 

Capitol Hill with My Rappelling Friend Beth!

 

The whole event was really a great experience. It was well run, we enjoyed trying to make a difference, it was fun meeting all of the other advocates, and hey – we snuck in a trip home for David to see his family. If you are interested in advocacy work with the National Brain Tumor Society, you can find more information on their website.

 

 

Vegas, Vegas, & A Triathlon

April and May have been really busy months for me with a number of trips that were personal or business. Over the last weekend in April David and I went to Vegas for the Stupid Cancer OMG Cancer Summit for Young Adults. The OMG Cancer Summit is "the premier oncology conference and social networking event for the young adult cancer movement".

 

 

Stupid Cancer Co-Founder in a Glam Runner Tutu

 

 

This was our second year coming to the conference and I enjoyed both attending the various sessions and meeting and spending time around so many other "young" (under 40) people going through cancer. My favorite session this year was the same one as last year titled "Cancer as Chronic". In this session almost everyone in room was in the same boat as me. We're fighting chronic/incurable cancers, living three months at a time between scans, and trying to enjoy a normal life in the mean time. Looking around the room you would have never guessed what had brought us all together. For the most part everyone looked healthy. One of the panelists even commented on that and everyone nodded in agreement. Some of the other sessions we attended were Cancer and the Environment and Cancer and Fertility.

 

 

Bumping Into Diane in Vegas!

 

While we were in Vegas we also happened to bump into my friend and former coworker Diane who was in town for a dental show. We crashed her reception one night and had a drink with her before heading off to dinner. We had dinner at my favorite restaurant Jaleo the first night and Rx Boiler Room the second night.

 

 

Selfies With the Husband

 

 

After coming back from Vegas I was in San Diego for a couple days before it was time to head back there again. This time for work to exhibit at a medical conference. Two trips to Vegas in one week is one or two trips to many, and by the weekend I was ready to go home. Especially since the day after I got back from Vegas I had my first triathlon of the year!

 

 Running on the Strip - Vegas Trip #2

 

 

I got home from Vegas late Saturday night and was up bright and early on Sunday morning for the Spring Sprint Triathlon. This was my first triathlon in almost three years, and was the first of three that I am doing this year as I progress up to a half Ironman distance race in July.

 

 Tri Gear Ready To Go

 

The hardest part of a triathlon for me is the swim. I'm not a great swimmer and I HATE swimming in the ocean. The water is murky and cold and having plants and who knows what else touch me in the water really freaks me out. I've been taking private swim lessons with a coach for the past few months to work on my technique and speed, and hoped between that and my single brief open water swim a few weeks before the race I'd be fine on race day.

 

 

First Time Back In The Ocean!

#oceanselfies

 

 

Well .... I ended up freaking out in the water. I can usually calm myself down and just get through the swim at a decent pace, but during this race I felt like I was hyperventilating the whole time. I could never catch my breath and ended up breaststroking for about half of the distance. Oh well, it was slow but I finally got through it.

 

 

Happy To Be Out Of The Water

 

 

The bike was a bit better although I've barely been riding my bike. I signed up for the San Diego Century next weekend to help keep me accountable on my bike training. Um, it hasn't. Prior to the Spring Sprint I probably rode my bike four times all year due to travel and various other excuses.

 

 

Having Fun On The Bike





 

 

The bike portion of the race went fairly quickly and as usual I was so happy to finally be running. At least I know how to run! The race overall was short and the swim was 400 meters, the bike was 10 miles, and the run was 3 miles. My goal for the race was to finish between 1:15 and 1:30 and I came in at 1:23:52. I'll take it!

 

 

Best Part Of A Triathlon - The Run!

 

  

After the race David and I went home to relax for a bit but later that night we were back on a plane again to head to DC. What a crazy week! We went to DC for three days to do advocacy work on behalf of the National Brain Tumor Society. More on that in my next blog post!

 

 

My Triathlon Cheerleaders Tara & David

 

 

In the mean time, we are now two months away from my half Ironman distance triathlon Barb's Race. All participants in Barb's Race are required to raise $250 to go towards a cancer charity in honor of Barbara Recchia, a long-time race volunteer and committee member who has unfortunately been faced with cancer twice. If you are interested in helping out with my fundraising you can access my page here.

 

 

 

Why I Love My Brain

Back in the Fall of last year Girls on the Run San Diego asked me to be the guest speaker at the women's film festival Lunafest. I spoke for the first time publicly about finding out that I have cancer, going through treatment, running, and why I love Girls on the Run. A teacher from one of the schools where we hold Girls on the Run reached out to me after the event and said that she really enjoyed hearing me talk and asked if I would be able to come and talk to the school for an event they were having called "Love Your Brain". Me?? Uh ..... sure! The event wasn't until April which was six months away and I almost forgot about it until a month or so ago when we touched base to go over details.

 

Packed Auditorium at Skyline Elementary



 

I found out that I would have about 30 minutes to speak to the 6th graders about my story which would tie into their week long event themed "Love Your Brain". In preparation for my visit the school showed the students my Katie Couric interview. I was nervous preparing for this talk since I wasn't sure what I should share that would be appropriate and interesting to kids that age. I wanted to be honest about my disease but didn't want to scare them too much, and wanted to somehow come across as a good role model.

Gift from the School

 

 

As I was putting together my photo presentation I decided to start out by talking about me, things I like, where I grew up, where I went to school, what I studied, and where I worked. This was a perfect opportunity for me to plug engineering of course, and I talked about how I majored in Mechanical Engineering and told the kids about the cool jobs I was hoping to get (working at Disneyland as an Imagineer or working at Mattel designing Barbie Jeeps) and what cool jobs I actually ended up getting (working at a robotics company and working at a video game company). It may seem silly, but I feel a need to do my part when I can to encourage kids to think about engineering as something fun and cool ... and of course something that a girl can do!

Engineering Class Trip to Chevron

 

 

I also included pictures that allowed me to talk about running, dressing up, and Girls on the Run. I also explained how I was diagnosed with brain cancer, what type of treatment I went through, and how I kept running through it all.

 

To tie in with the theme I ended with the reasons I love my brain. I love my brain because it allows me to be:
 

 

CARING

 

 

INTELLIGENT

 

 

CREATIVE

 

 

CONFIDENT

 

 

MOTIVATED

 

 

BRAVE

 

 

SUPPORTIVE

 

 

OPTIMISTIC

 

 

 

Yes, I did throw some things in there to be crowd pleasers like the pictures of the dogs for my "caring" example. If you want you can watch the whole photo presentation here. It's a bit long, grab some popcorn!

 

 

 

 

After I finished my presentation they asked me to take questions. I never would have imagined that the kids would have so many questions for me. Boy was I wrong! The whole room was filled with hands in the air! I answered question after question for about 15 minutes until we finally had to cut the kids off. The questions ranged from "Do you play any musical instruments" to "What do you do for your job now?" to "Have you ever done an Ironman?" to the last question which was the hardest question to answer ... "What would you do if you were told you only have one year to live?" Geez kids, getting heavy here! I was able to answer all of their questions and really had a fun time doing so. If you haven't finished your popcorn and want to kick back and watch another 15 minute video, here is the segment with all of the kids questions.

 

 

The whole experience was really great and I loved having a chance to spend the afternoon with these kids. I hope they all love their brains a little bit more now!