I ran 26 miles with cancer.. and it probably saved my life
Toni diagnosed weeks after marathon
When Toni Kyriacos ran the London Marathon, she felt the fittest she had ever been – but was actually the sickest.
Just weeks after completing the 26-mile run for charity, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But now Toni, 49, believes doing it probably saved her life.
She said: “When I look back, I can’t believe I ran a marathon with cancer but perhaps being diagnosed when I was so fit was the best possible time. I really thought my body was at its fittest ever, when the irony is I just didn’t know I was probably the unhealthiest I’ve ever been.
“I’ve never been a runner, so applying to run a marathon was a crazy thing for me to do – but I’m so glad I did it now.”
She had run to raise funds for a hospice that had cared for her dad Gerry before his death at the age of 57 from cancer years earlier. Global sales support boss Toni, who splits her time living between Glasgow and London, said: “I think I must have been having some sort of pre- midlife crisis when I decided to apply to run the
marathon. I ’ d never run further r than for the bus s before. Initially I got a reply saying I hhadn’td’ maded it through the draw to get a place. But I’d forgotten I’d applied to raise money for my dad’s hospice and they contacted me to say I’d got a place through them, so I would be running in the 2018 marathon.”
Toni started training in December 2017. She found following a couch-to-5k programme quickly progressed to her running longer distances and, when the day of the marathon came, she ran the 26.2-mile route in six hours.
Toni said: “Not being a runner, my goal had been just to get through it. I wasn’t pushing myself to beat a previous good run time because I didn’t have any. The day itself was a brilliant experience.”
Toni and her husband Mark – who she met on a fundraising charity trek in India in 2006 – then headed on holiday to Israel. It was there that she discovered a strange mark, then a lump, on her breast.
She said: “At first I thought I must have knocked myself. It looked like a bruise but, rather than going through its nnatural cycle of brubruise colours, it stastayed very red. ThThen a lump appeared.”app
TToni, then 46, wewent to her GP, whowh referred her for tests. She was toltold she had stage 3 breast cancer and would need chemo, surgery and radiotherapy.
She said: “If I had been less active, I would have struggled more with the fallout of what the chemo was doing to my body.”
Toni went through a year of treatment, supported by Mark, family, friends and charity Breast Cancer Now. She said: “Breast cancer can affect anyone and it’s so important people go to the doctor if anything doesn’t seem right.”
Rachael Franklin, of Breast Cancer Now, said: “Our work is needed now more than ever, both in providing support and bringing hope through our world-class research.”