For her 50th birthday in November 2017, Ann Elliot took a dream run-cation—to Las Vegas with her husband Britt. She ran down the strip for the Rock ’n’ Roll 10K and visited the Grand Canyon.
On her next birthday, Elliot found herself in a far different scenario: in the operating room, having surgery to treat what she’d soon find out was stage 4 colon cancer.
Her diagnosis and treatments have required her to cancel two half marathons. But still, the Waterman, Illinois, resident keeps running.
Until she can return to the starting line, her goals just look a bit different: “I’m training to be living a longer life at this point, and to beat a disease that’s brutal,” she said.
Striding Toward Stress Relief
As important as running is to her now, Elliot didn’t pick up the sport until she was 47. She was laid off from her job after eight and a half years and felt lost.
Walks cleared her head. Eventually, she picked up the pace. Running, she found, powered her through life’s challenges: “If you had a bad day, you can run it out and then move on.”
She found a new job, at a bank, but kept up the routine. She changed her diet, lost about 30 pounds, and began signing up for races. She dropped her 5K time below 30 minutes and her 10K time, at the Smash your goals with a in August 2017, to 59:04. “Having those goals and achieving them is just very satisfying,” she said.
[She Raced 18 Horses in an Ultramarathonand Won Runner’s World Training Plan, designed for any speed and any distance.]
In 2018, she set her sights on the Starved Rock Half Marathon in May. Despite a hip issue that interfered with her training, she finished, in 2:26:36. She made plans to run two more races—including the Space Coast Half Marathon in Cocoa, Florida, in December, which was supposed to be Britt’s first as well.
But Elliot’s achy joint wasn’t her only difficulty. Sometime around late 2017 or early 2018, she also noticed a fatigue that didn’t make sense given her healthy, active lifestyle.
At first, she suspected waking up for early-morning runs was the the culprit. So she switched to running after work instead—but still felt herself dragging.
In May, she visited her primary care doctor, who ran some initial tests and recommended, based on her age, that she schedule bloodwork, a mammogram, and a colonoscopy as well.
Elliot booked the colonoscopy for October 8. But the week before, she began feeling bloated, then had sharp abdominal pains. She went to an urgent care center, then the emergency room for a CT scan, which revealed a perforated colon.
At first, her doctors suspected diverticulitis, an inflammation in the intestine. But subsequent testing revealed a 25-centimeter mass in her colon.
The surgery she had on her birthday the next month was a colorectomy—removal of her sigmoid colon and rectum—and a hysterectomy. That’s because she also had fibroids in her uterus that were interfering with her treatment, and she needed her ovaries removed so the cancer wouldn’t spread there.
Elliot went home from the hospital on Sunday, and on Monday, the doctor called to tell her five lymph nodes tested positive for cancer. Soon, suspicious spots on her liver were also found to be cancerous. That’s when Elliot learned her cancer was stage 4a, meaning it had spread to a single distant organ.
Exercise As Therapy
Her treatment team—including Alan Wan, D.O., medical oncologist at Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital Cancer Center—decided to shrink the lesions in her liver with chemotherapy, then remove them surgically.
From December to March, Elliot underwent six rounds of chemo every week or two. The week of her infusion, she was often too nauseous or weak to move much. But during her off weeks, she ran four to five times per week, usually for about three and a half miles. It’s one way she can take control of a situation that often feels overwhelming.
To ramp back up after surgery, and based on Wan’s instructions, she’s slowed her pace. While moderate exercise helps, pushing too hard might cause her heart to work harder than it needs to and add additional stress that could impair her ability to recover from chemotherapy, he said.
During intervals of two-tenths of a mile running, she sets the speed slower than she’s used to, about 5 miles per hour or a 12-minute mile. She walks for a tenth of a mile in between and aims to keep her breathing easy.
Besides slowing down, her disease and treatment have led to other changes. Her extremities are sensitive to the cold—when the temperature drops, electric-like jolts shoot up through her feet. So, during this frigid Midwest winter, she’s stuck to the treadmill.
She also keeps a box of tissues nearby. The drugs have thinned the hair on her head—and the tissue inside her nose, which then runs and bleeds.
Some days, she finds her motivation lacking. But then she recalls what Wan told her: Research shows people who exercise respond better to chemo. “I’m going to be one of those people,” she said. “It makes me more determined to do it because my intention is to be disease-free.”
There are early signs her strategy’s been beneficial. Compared to patients who are less fit, Elliot’s scores on tests measuring fatigue have been “markedly better,” Wan said. “She’s ready to go every single time we’re doing chemotherapy.”
Even before her diagnosis, Elliot typically ran alone—she and Britt were at different paces. But she’s found a supportive community in a Facebook group called Team Turtle, which she joined about a year ago as part of a challenge on the MapMyRun app.
In addition to the details of her workouts, Elliot’s posted some of the information about her diagnosis, treatment, and progress. Group members have responded by checking in on her online and off. One even sent her a care package complete with Sudoku puzzles, a bracelet that says “warrior” she wears to chemo, and handwritten notes she reads before each treatment.
She’s joined support groups for colon cancer patients too, but a group focused on another part of her life reminds her she’s more than her diagnosis. “I have colorectal cancer. It is a part of me. It will always be a part of me,” she said. “But you don’t want that to be what defines you.”
The Next Starting Line
While it’s true physical activity reduces the risk of developing colorectal cancer, Wan hopes that as Elliot shares her story, runners realize “nobody’s immune to these diagnoses.”
One thing that shocked Elliot was how mild and vague her symptoms were, even at a late stage. “It can present so silently you don’t feel anything,” Wan said. In addition to fatigue, typical symptoms include bloating, blood in your stool, and unexplained weight loss. But by the time they develop, the disease may be much more serious.
After her diagnosis, Elliot dug into her family history and found that her father—who she’d thought died of liver cancer—also had colorectal cancer, as did his sister. Had she known that, she would have started getting colonoscopies before age 50.
She—and Wan—encourage others to investigate their own family trees, tell their doctors about what they find, and discuss the best screening strategies.
Elliot is now on a break from chemo and recovering from her liver surgery a couple weeks ago. Afterward, she’ll have to take six weeks off running again, and will also start another six rounds of chemo.
But if her treatments go well enough, she aims to run a 5K this fall. “I keep it in my head that I still have goals. It’s not where it was last year or the year before, but I still have goals.”
After all, she has a half marathon personal record to beat—with training, she believes she could run 2:20 or 2:15, perhaps in 2020. “I still call the Starved Rock Half Marathon my first half marathon,” she said. “I do intend that I will have a second and hopefully more than that.”
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
