Cyndi was not a runner before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In fact, she was anti-running. She did Jazzercise and yoga. She danced. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and massage therapist, she greeted new clients who identified themselves as runners with a battery of questions: "Do you know what you are doing to your knees? To your hips? Are you crazy?"

After her surgery and recovery, she got a call from the Susan G. Komen Foundation asking if she would like to join a running team of breast cancer survivors. Survivors. She liked the sound of it. She told the Komen Foundation volunteer, Christine, that she would join the team. She thought about it. After cancer how hard could it be to run a couple of hundred miles? She doesn't ask her clients if they are crazy anymore. She understands why they run..

Christine asked her to be the team captain this year. When Cyndi talked to her teammates about their training and preparations for the race, she sensed they were on edge They were upset about Peggy's recurrence. They wanted to be together, to talk about it, but also to forget and have fun with each other. Cyndi talked about her own situation to only two of her teammates..

Peggy, after whom the team is named, can't run with them this year. She came with pom poms and noise makers to ride in the van and cheer them on. But after the first few legs, she was exhausted. Now she rests and waits at the beach and calls in to keep track of the team.

Peg's Legs is one of more than 800 teams that run the Hood to Coast. One of the Nike teams travels in unmarked Humvees pulling Wells Cargo trailers loaded with gear. The recreational runners, who put their names on the side of their vans and sometimes add decorations, are going for a laugh. The "Pink Flamingos" have strapped their mascot and namesake, a large, inflated, pink bird atop their van. For "Dead Runners Walking," it is a coffin with the ankles and sneakers of a wasted runner shut in the lid. The "Twelve Elvises" wear leather jackets or sequined capes and sport pompadours and side burns.

The vans carrying Cyndi's team are decorated, too, with photographs of breast cancer survivors and of women who lost their struggle with the disease, their mothers, sisters, friends. And on each van are the photos of the runners themselves.

Cancer doesn't leave much room to negotiate, but with this recurrence Cyndi is determined to take her time deciding the options. The biopsy showed tiny lesions in three of the four quadrants of her breast, and it is clear to her doctors that she needs a mastectomy. The statistics say she risks a 25 percent chance of developing invasive cancer elsewhere in her body. Still, her diagnosis was in April, and it is now August, and she has yet to figure out what she will do.

When she told her teenage son that she was considering a mastectomy, he said, "I bet Dad will be mad." Cyndi understood it was just a teenager talking. Still, it infuriated her to know that he thought her body in some way belonged to her husband or children.

She could accept the mastectomy, if it was necessary, but she wasn't ready yet to give up on the idea of keeping her breast. She was playing games in her head, diminishing the seriousness of the cancer. The tumors themselves were so small. How could anything that small really be deadly? She had plenty of time to make a decision, she thought.

Cyndi was also concerned with the options after the surgery, if she chose mastectomy. Should she have reconstruction? If she did, which option was better? And who would the reconstruction be for? Maybe she should just be fitted for a prosthesis. It was too much to process. Just run the Hood to Coast, Cyndi thought, and then figure it out.

She hears the race official on the course calling numbers: 752. Team 752. 195. Team 195.

Her number will be up soon. She moves to the exchange box where other runners wait. The "box" is really just two lines drawn across the road about twenty feet apart. Between these lines the exchange of the race bracelet must take place. Transfer the bracelet too soon or too late and a team could face a penalty or disqualification. The runners dance on toes, stretch calves and thighs, twist torsos and wait. Waiting is the hardest part. Around her there is laughter, the pleasure of a shared adventure among recreational runners.