Lessons from a Runner

“I am not a dreamer... but I believe in miracles. I have to.”

Terry Fox – letter to potential sponsors before starting the Marathon of Hope in 1980.

This morning when I went down to the valley to dash off a quick 10K--a recovery run from the 70.3 last weekend--I ran smack into a whole lot of people, all seemingly headed in the same direction.

Of course; I had forgotten. Today was the annual Terry Fox Run, which happens every September in cities, towns, and villages all across Canada, and which to date has raised more than $600 million in support of cancer research. The ten kilometres being covered by the participants I met this morning—runners, walkers and even people pushing strollers—took me back to my very first 10K event, nearly thirty years ago.

I was granted the gift of a healthy body at birth, but by the time I reached thirty I had allowed myself to become a physical train wreck. My lifestyle at the time lent itself to long bouts of self-indulgence; I was a heavy smoker, an epic drinker, and an avowed layabout. With the accumulated wisdom and certitude that only youth can claim, I had determined that after I turned thirty-five my body would begin a gradual but inexorable process of deterioration, which would end in utter decrepitude around the age of fifty. If such a slide was in fact beyond my control, I had decided I would settle back and enjoy the ride.

Of course I knew who Terry Fox was; every Canadian did. He had raised a ton of money for cancer research by attempting to run across Canada after losing his right leg to 

A Marathon a Day

osteosarcoma. During his Marathon of Hope in the summer of 1980 he ran 42 kilometres—the distance of a full marathon—every single day. As every Canadian also knows, he could not ultimately outrun his disease, which caught up with him near Thunder Bay in September 1980 and ended his quest, and his life.

Some years after he died, I happened to see a news clip of Terry running down the highway, with his recognizable hop-skip gait as he bounced back and forth from his artificial leg to his good one. What touched me as I watched him—this young man with so much stacked against him—was how completely calm and focussed he looked, despite the traffic rushing by him and the crowds pressing on all sides. However uncertain his future was, he had taken control of what he could by setting a seemingly impossible goal and then taking the steps—literally one at a time— to accomplish that goal. Looking back, I realize that this image formed the template for much of how I would try to live my own life over the next three decades.

If Terry Fox, by the singular strength of his spirit, could push his broken body to the ends of endurance daily, any healthy person, I decided, should be able to accomplish anything.

Although I had not run a step since childhood, I began to wonder if I might try to finish the 10 kilometre distance of the September 1985 Terry Fox Run. I started my training by running around the block, stopping every lap or so for a cigarette. Every part of my body violently protested against the intrusive new regimen. The first time I ran nonstop for fifteen minutes I coughed violently for hours afterward and my legs were so stiff I couldn’t walk down the stairs for two days.

I kept up the training and somehow completed the event.

That fall of 1985 I hacked and wheezed my way through two more 10K races. I found that I enjoyed the newfound sensation of pushing myself to test my limits. I had never had the slightest love or aptitude for team sports of any kind, so I embraced the solitude offered by long distance running. Equally important to me, my new fitness habit gave me the motivation I needed to quit my heavy smoking habit forever.

I became a setter of goals, some of them, like Terry’s, seemingly impossible. Right after my first Terry Fox Run I bought a book called “How to Run Your First Marathon.” Two years later, I had done what the book advised, and had, in fact, run my first marathon. In 1994, looking to broaden my scope, I tried a triathlon, adding swimming and biking to running. In 2002, the year I turned fifty (that prophesied age of decrepitude!), I completed my first Ironman. As of today, I have participated in more of these long-distance events than I can count. A few years ago my participation as a cyclist in the Race Across the West gave me the opportunity to raise money on behalf of Canadians fighting multiple myeloma, a rare form of cancer.

The legacy Terry Fox left behind is immeasurable and the lives that his life has touched are uncountable, even in ways he could never have imagined.

Terry’s motivation was different from mine; he wanted to raise money and awareness for cancer research, whereas I wanted to validate my stewardship of my own body. I’m not sure that he intended to reach people like me when he began his journey, but his example inspired me to start down a road of my own towards a lifelong passion for endurance athletics. He taught me not to accept limits, self-imposed or otherwise. For nearly thirty years his passion has been my companion, my slave driver, my sparring partner, my confessor and absolver, my judge, and my therapist. I continue to set near-impossible goals for the sheer joy of challenging myself.

I started running because of Terry, and like him I do not mean to give up until the last step is taken.



Terry Fox Memorial - Thunder Bay Ontario
Terrific photo by Matt Kawei