‘You only live once’

A Cavan woman battling a rare and incurable form of bone marrow cancer hopes to run her 600th lifetime marathon by June of this year.

When Brenda O’Keeffe (48) was told her of diagnosis at University College Hospital in London in August last year it hit like a bombshell.

The Harmony Heights native had been suffering a series of spontaneous and serious bleeds to her neck, liver, and spleen. She spent months in hospital. The longest stint was 39 days with medical experts baffled as to the exact cause of her debilitating illness.

By March 2024 Brenda was told she “could” have cancer, but one so rare it was hard for doctors to detect. It turned out to be Amyloidosis AL of the heart, kidney, liver, bone marrow and spleen.

“Multiple myeloma. Incurable,” is what her treating physician told her.

Brenda’s is an incredible story of determination and perseverance, and a big part of the reason why her brother Geoff has nominated his sister for the coveted Outsider.ie Olly O’Neill Most Inspiring Person 2024 award. Sponsored by Craghoppers, the award recognises normal Irish people who, despite being faced with insurmountable odds, go above and beyond to encourage others to share their love of outdoor and adventure pursuits.

Aged 31 years, and inspired by the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon as runners sped past her on a walk home one day, professional chef Brenda ran her first 10 kilometres in June 2010, and completed her first marathon just four months later. With the weight of the Dublin City medal barely around her neck, Brenda jetted off to Frankfurt five days later to finish another 26.2 miles (42.195 KM).

“I was hooked,” she recalls, and long before her early exploits began making headlines around the world.

Brenda kicked a 60-a-day smoking habit and never looked back. The cities she has been to and ran marathons in trip off the tongue: London, Paris, Madrid and even further afield to places like Chicago.

Aside from setting a European and Irish record for most marathons ran in a year (107), including 20 in a single month and 10 in just five days; in 2015 she also ran home from Croke Park to Cavan for Christmas in aid of CF Cavan and for ‘Care for Cian’, the latter set up for a friend’s son born with Cri Du Chat (Cry of the Cat) and Mosaic Down Syndrome. It was for those endeavours that Brenda last won an Outsider.ie award, in the ‘Breakthrough Achievement of the Year’ category in 2016.

She moved to the UK around that time too, and continued where she left off in Ireland, racking up marathon after marathon until health problems got in the way.

Incredibly Brenda hated running growing up. She remembers being made run laps of the pitch by the nuns as a student at Loreto College. But she now has almost 576 lifetime marathons under her belt, and is aiming to hit the 600 mark by mid-summer.

“I thought I would have had my thousandth marathon done [before she got sick]. That got in the way and slowed me down a lot, naturally enough. But I hope, this year and by the summer, I’ll have done my 600th marathon, please God by June.”

Of the early stages of her illness, Brenda remembers how at its worst she “nearly died”.

“I was in intensive care a while. When I had the bleed in the neck, I couldn’t even walk, I was at a skew. They didn’t know what was wrong with me.”

Incredibly, on the same day Brenda was retraining to walk straight on a hospital ward with the help of a physio, her name and number was down for running a 100 mile race only around the corner.

She was on holidays, out of hospital, when doctors did eventually ring to inform her and confirm had she had contracted Amyloidosis disease.

“They sent me to MacMillan and it was they who confirmed I had multiple myeloma. There is no cure. It was a frightening day.”

Brenda currently travels to London to get chemotherapy every Tuesday.

Her partner Séan Smith has been a pillar of strength throughout it all. He knows better than to try slow Brenda down.

She refers to running as her “happy pill”. It’s nothing any cancer doctor can prescribe, but Brenda relies on it to keep going.

“When you’re told you’ve cancer, your life changes completely. Your whole mindset changes. If I stopped now, I might stop completely. I do it to keep going. I want to appreciate everyday. Keep pushing myself. I basically walk-run marathons now. I try every weekend to do one. Whatever about my body, I still have my mental strength.

“When they told me it was incurable I asked them, ‘How long? How long do I have to live?’ They told me in 10 years, of 70 people, the first 10 will die within a year and the rest will pass away within the 10 years. It does kill me, after chemo I am in bits. It has made me slower. But come the weekend I just love pulling on my runners and getting out there. If I didn’t have that to look forward to I don’t know what I’d do.”

The pain of crossing the finish line now is often excruciating.

She suffers like many others from chemo induced nausea. The cancer has caused nerve damage to both her hands and feet, and on top of everything else Brenda is nursing a fractured bone in her back.

Yet Brenda’s next marathon, later this week, is along the Thames Pass. She’ll start at 5am and aims to complete it before lunchtime.

Before she got sick Brenda would run one if not two marathons every weekend, with the odd 100 mile Ultra event thrown in for good measure. She was no stranger to running marathons in an average of four to five hours. Now it’s closer to seven and eight.

Brenda is as proud, if not prouder still, of the times she’s setting now as any of her previous personal bests.

“They mean more. I can’t explain the pride I feel, that feeling of achievement. I suppose I’m fighting for every step now and I can’t wait to do the next one. I won’t let it beat me. People tell me I need to rest and they’re probably right. But when you’ve cancer like I have you only live once. So what do I do? Stay at home? Do nothing except look at the walls? Or do I go out and do something that I love?”

Brenda hopes to inspire others suffering illness to look beyond the confines of their diagnosis, whether temporary or terminal.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s seven or eight hours, so long as you finish. There’s going to come to a time when I can’t do it any more, I know that. I’ll get too slow. But that time isn’t now.”