A story of peaks, canyons and trying to out-pace grief
By Rachel Toor
As featured in the June 2010 issue of Running Times MagazineShe died four weeks after she heard her doctor tell her she had three weeks to live. My mother was nothing if not compliant. She had been ill for four and a half years. I spent every vacation, every break, traveling 13 hours through three time zones and four airports going to see her. From her home in upstate New York, I would run to the drugstore, the grocery store, the library. And I would run on the hills and trails of Ithaca, with a group of friends and by myself.