I started running at the age of 45 for reasons that I chronicled in this blog at part 1 of My Running Life. I then ran my first marathon at age 50, completed the World Marathon Majors, ran Comrades ultra in South Africa. I ran 20 marathons and 2 ultra marathons in total and was pretty good at the running lark. Marathon best of 3:23 in my 50’s and averaged 3:27 for the WMM.
Then I ran into cancer when my runners groin strain turned out to be something far more sinister, stage 4 incurable prostate cancer with a PSA of 129, Gleason 5+4 and bone mets throughout my skeleton from pelvis to skull. The urologist told my Wife I’d probably had it developing for 10 years and I’d had no symptoms until the “groin strain” started in February 2017 3 months before my diagnosis in May 2017.
Running was such a massive part of my life that the first question I asked my oncologist wasn’t “How long have I got to live?” it was “Will I still be able to run?” and I was very pleased when he told me that I would once the stress fractures of my pelvis, aka “groin strain”, had healed as it would help me cope with treatment side effects. He did tell me that I’d be much slower because the treatment would remove male hormone, testosterone, the feeds the cancer and without testosterone you gain weight, lose muscle mass and bone density, suffer with dreadful fatigue and simply can’t do what you used to.
I got back to running as quickly as I could but really struggled with being so much slower than pre treatment and let it get me down. Nowadays I’m just glad to be here and still plodding. Yes, being slow cheeses me off but the alternative is pretty grim.
I ran London marathon in a massive personal worst a year after treatment started. I ran 970 miles the following year to run one mile for every man that died every month in the UK. Yes, that’s correct, 970 men died every month in the UK of prostate cancer.
I then completed Race to The Castle 100km ultramarathon and ran at least 5km per day for 365 days in 2022. All told I’ve raised nearly £100,000 for cancer charities taking on these daft adventures.
Cancer never stopped me, it just slowed me down. However, it got a lot tougher because of other factors!
A good benchmark for me is my times at parkrun. In July 2023 I ran 30:17, the following month a knee niggle slowed me down and I took it really easy running Amsterdam Se parkrun in 32:45 but, at the 4.5km mark my knee went completely as the medial meniscus cartilage tore. The put paid to my running for a while!
In December 2023 I had the torn meniscus trimmed but it was pretty obvious that it hadn’t made much difference. The bone on either side had grade 3 and grade 4 wear and there isn’t a grade 5! Ultimately this meant having a partial knee replacement on 1st May 2024.
I worked really hard on my rehab and eventually started running again 4 months after surgery. In October 2024 I ran 35:25. Then the first 6 months of 2025 were awful. I contracted one cold virus after another, 6 in total and really suffered the effects of hay fever which was something new to me but exacerbated by moving to a new house surrounded by trees! Times Jan-Apr 2025 were in the region of 36-37 minutes.
Once the hay fever season cleared my times improved and from May-Dec 2025 I was clocking 33-35 minutes with a best of 33:15.
Then spring 2026 arrived and the hay fever was accompanied by breathlessness when under exertion like running. No impact day to day at all but set off for a run and some days I only got 400m before breathlessness kicked in. Times Jan-May 2026 were 35-37 minutes with a best of 35:08.
Then things really deteriorated and June-Sept times were typically 37-39 minutes with a best of 36:45 and a worst of 40:20 but steadily getting worse over the period.
I don’t mind the times but I am really struggling with not being able to run 5km without walking, even when I take it really slowly deliberately.
Various tests showed minor issues but nothing likely to cause the problem and medication didn’t help much. Thankfully I’m seeing a respiratory consultant in October and hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of it!
Of course advancing years and the cumulative impact of 9+ years of cancer treatment haven’t helped but it’s very frustrating. However, I haven’t let the problems stop me!
I try to run 4 times per week, do a strength training class and work hard at maintaining fitness. I also get round parkrun every Saturday.
parkrun was never a big part of my pre cancer running life but it’s become a massive part of it post cancer and on Saturday 19th September I hit a milestone that had been a target for a while, 324th parkrun. Now that’s not an official parkrun milestone but it’s a very significant one for me as it was my 300th parkrun post diagnosis. Tracey and I are trying to run the parkrun alphabet and she needed an F so we turned up at Fletcher Moss parkrun. I wore my Tackle Prostate Cancer T-shirt which sparked a conversation with one of the volunteers who is on active surveillance and another conversation with a Radonc who was visiting from Perth Australia.
It seemed an unusually young mix of runners and there were only 3 people in the VM65-69 and VW65-69 age groups when normally there would be at least 10. It was a lovely parkrun. My time was rubbish but it felt good to get round even though I was last out of 3 in my age group but first in the incurable cancer category!
I’m pleased that parkrun have now recognised more milestones as that schlep from 250 to 500 parkruns had started to feel like a real slog and likely to take me another 4-5 years from here and who knows if I’ll still be around then! Next stop 400 though and another different coloured T-shirt!
Moral to the story is that you just have to keep on keeping on! KOKO!
Running Into Cancer 