Inspirational Stories

When cancer hangs your cleats up for good

At my first appointment, the physical therapist asked me why. Why did I want to run a marathon? And I didn't have an answer, partly because when you meet someone, you don't want to blurt out all sorts of emotional baggage, and that's the sort of question that can trigger a lot of baggage.

Thanks to a recurrence of lymphoma that damaged the base of my spine, I have to run with a brace to stop my left foot from flopping around. Going out for a run feels like I’m strapping on a wood block and balancing on it with every other step. It’s starting to feel better, more smooth perhaps, but only after many hours of physical therapy and training. Putting in the hours to train brings a semblance of normalcy at least.

Growing up, I was always a fast little geek who loved the game of tag because the only athletic trait I had was the ability to outrun the other kids. I ran track for a few years in high school, and that’s where I learned that there were plenty of people that were quicker than me—just not by much.

My favorite race was the 400 meters, the longest of the sprints, one full lap around a standard outdoor track. You start from a sprinter’s crouch, accelerate into the first curve, hit your peak speed in the first straightaway, slingshot around the second turn while trying to hold your pace and then you slam into the wall—an invisible brick edifice of exhaustion that grips you with the strength of a tractor beam in Star Wars. All you have left at that point, to power you through the final straightaway, is your form and your willpower.

When I got to college, I started playing competitive ultimate frisbee. Ultimate may not be a premier sport, but it has semi-pro leagues and college championships. The sport is recognized by the International Olympic Committee, though you didn't see it in the Tokyo games or any other Olympics just yet.

In ultimate, I was the defensive specialist, the cover guy who made his man disappear from the opposing offense. While I never played on one of the premier teams of my generation (Boston’s Death or Glory and New York New York), I competed at that level and played with teams that won a number of prominent tournaments.

In ultimate frisbee, there were also quite a few people who were quicker than me by a step or so. And so I learned the skills of man-to-man defense: field awareness, so you know where the flow of the play is going; positioning, so you stay in between your man and where he wants to go; physicality, hand-checking and nudging him out of position; and heckling, bringing him out of his comfort zone to delay his reactions by just enough. At the end of the game, no matter how high the stakes, I prided myself on delivering the key defensive play.

Growing older slowed me down, of course; you can’t be speedy forever. Sooner or later, the young punks will be swifter. I hid from them in the older player divisions that ultimate frisbee created, the masters, grandmasters, and even great grandmasters championships. These were especially fun at the start of the decades; in my early 40s, for instance, I was amazingly fast compared to those in their late 40s. But the young punks also kept moving up in the age brackets.

Throughout the years I ran long distances as well, first as a training supplement but soon it became a spiritual outlet. Running just to savor the joy of motion meant embracing a different mindset—chasing and enjoying a runner’s high—and competition became an afterthought.

I eventually gravitated to the mountain races that test your willpower (Mt. Washington in New Hampshire and Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina). I ran the Empire State Building stair race four times, 86 flights of stairs up but only 400 meters in distance. I ran the NYC marathon once, a week after I tore my rotator cuff at the ultimate frisbee national championships.

The first time that lymphoma popped up, seven years ago, it was a sprint, not a marathon. I found it early, before it did any damage, and sped through four months of chemotherapy. My first cancer experience was actually something of a blessing; I had let the combination of parenting and office work distract me from my running habit; cancer treatment rekindled that love as I ran regularly in between treatments.

The second time lymphoma popped up was different; it came back as a mass on the base of my spine. The nerve damage felt initially like I tweaked the meniscus in my right knee. It first popped up in a training run and then in the North American Ultimate Championships for the 50+ division, which my team won. I played great despite the “tweak” and the victory was the very last thing my dad got excited about, as he was in the end stages of pancreatic cancer.

The next year and a half, however, was a torturous marathon trek through increasing nerve pain as the mass in my lower spine grew and took away my ability to run—first my right hip was in agony, then the left hip, and then my right quadricep shrunk, and then my left foot went dead. Doctor after doctor couldn’t figure out what the problem was until finally I was diagnosed with a cancer recurrence in June of last year—at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After four months of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, I was considered cancer-free yet again. I’m grateful to have survived but this recovery has been much tougher. My legs are a hodgepodge; my left thigh and right calf have regained their musculature while my right thigh and left calf haven’t. I built back my endurance in the unfinished basement of our house, with an elliptical machine that sits next to a rack of storage shelves. But running remains a slow, plodding challenge and I’m now retired from ultimate, for good.

The physical therapist who asked me why I wanted to run a marathon was a specialist in running and the second therapist I’ve seen. I showed up at her office with my bulky brace and four-year-old, worn-out running shoes that she couldn’t even bring herself to look at. The first therapist built back a large portion of muscle control and balance, but this new therapist has to bring me across the finish line.

And the answer to her question? For five decades, I've always been the fastest guy in the room, the one who worked the hardest to remain one of those young punks. Being middle aged was always going to take my speed away, but cancer has robbed me of my form and much of my identity.

I am not the “enlightened” survivor who is grateful for every day; that cliche needs to be retired along with my cleats. It’s hard to be serene after the cancer wrecking ball has smashed through me and my family, not once but twice.

I'm running a marathon because it remains the truest exercise of willpower, both the race itself and the interminable amount of training needed. Because, so many times, I wake up in the morning and all that I have left is my willpower. And perhaps that's all I need—not to get to the finish line, or even the starting line, but to travel back to the happy place that running used to be.