Lori Ford will do the half marathon like she has for several years, but this time, she’ll walk it while surrounded by runner friends.

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OKLAHOMA CITY — Lori Ford had a sudden thought a month or so ago.

She wanted to do the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon.

Even though Ford has done the event before, finishing the half marathon every year since 2019, it was still strange for her to be thinking about doing it this spring. She is in the middle of chemotherapy treatments for stage four metastatic breast cancer.

She is fighting for her life.

And still, the 58-year-old told her boyfriend that day last month she wished she could do the half marathon. Join with friends. Enjoy the experience. She even told him that she thought she’d signed up last year when the entry fee was low.

“But I haven’t gotten any emails,” she told him. “I guess I just was thinking it.”

She knows stress and chemo have clouded her thoughts, so she figured her memory was off. And with mounting medical bills, she had a hard time justifying paying full price for a half-marathon entry fee.

Then last week, an email brought hope.

Subject line: You have registered for the OKC Memorial Marathon.

Sunday morning, Ford will be among the tens of thousands snaking through the streets of Oklahoma City during the Memorial Marathon. No one will have a backstory quite like hers. She beat breast cancer nine years ago, but last fall, she found out it had returned, metastasizing and attacking her bones. It has eaten away and weakened everything from her spine to her hips to her shoulder blades.

Her doctors have used a word worse than cancer.

Terminal.

“Metastasis is treatable, but there’s no cure,” Ford explained. “It’s with me forever. I will always have some cancer in my body. It’s a matter of whether it will be active cancer or not. So the goal is to shut it down.”

Ford is doing everything in her power to do just that, taking treatments that have left her fatigued and nauseous and depressed.

But on Sunday, she doesn’t plan on thinking about any of that. 

Instead, she will join with almost a dozen of her runner friends to do the half marathon. There might not be much running. Or any running. Walking is more Ford’s speed nowadays.

But there will be fun. 

Lots and lots of fun.

A reinvestment in her ‘survivorship’

Lori Ford didn’t start running until after she had cancer. 

During her diagnosis and treatment nine years ago, she read all sorts of studies and articles about fighting cancer, beating cancer and living life after cancer. One from the American Cancer Society stuck with her. It said women who’ve had cancer reduced their chance of recurrence by 40% by exercising three hours a week. 

Only 180 minutes a week to cut the chance of getting cancer by 40%?

Ford signed up for a 5K training group at Red Coyote Running and Fitness, but she admits she didn’t stick with it. Cold temperatures during early-morning training runs drove her away.

But then a year or so later, Ford’s mom died. Losing her was a crushing blow to Ford. But amid her grief, she found herself thinking about her own children.

“I don’t want my kids to go through this pain of having me die at an early age,” she thought. “I want to be able to extend my life.”

She decided to, as she called it, “reinvest in my survivorship.” She signed up for the Red Coyote 5K training again, and this time, she not only saw it through but also started losing weight.

All told, she dropped 40 pounds. 

Ford felt so good about things that she decided to do a 10K — and she convinced some of the friends she made in the 5K training to do the 10K training along with her.

“She’s really good at rallying people to do things,” said Paula Wilkinson, one of those runner friends. 

“She’s quite the go getter.”

If Brandon Ingram’s body language was any indication in Game 2, the Pelicans guard doesn’t want any part of Thunder defensive stopper Lu Dort for two more games, much less four or five more.

More from @JenniCarlson_OK: ➡️ https://t.co/6mZQ8vx0Iz #OklaFord pic.twitter.com/kAu31MCvxl

— Sellout Crowd (@selloutcrowd_) April 25, 2024

When they were done with the 10K, Ford wanted to try something even more audacious. She proposed doing the half marathon at the Memorial Marathon and started working to convince her friends to join her.

Her biggest tool of persuasion: fear of missing out.

“You’re gonna have such bad FOMO if you see a photo of all of us at the end of a half marathon,” she told her runner friends.

She chuckled at the memory as she sat talking in a coffee shop recently.

“Peer pressure, right?” she said.

Her eyes twinkled.

“Some people say I’m a little persuasive.”

But when she let it be known last week that she intended to do the half at the Memorial Marathon, no persuading was necessary. A couple friends agreed to join her right away, including Wilkinson. Then a few more said they would. Then more.

By the end of the day Thursday, Ford had a group of 10 friends who had committed to joining her. Most of them have been training for the race for months, but they are changing plans, maybe even putting aside goals, to be with Ford.

“It’s more important for us to support her than get a good time,” Wilkinson said. 

“She has this horrible diagnosis, but she makes other women feel valued and tells them she wants them to be in the fold with her. That’s really special, that she can make each one of us feel valued and special … and here she has cancer.”

‘Part of my healing’

Lori Ford isn’t sure what the next few months will hold.

After learning her cancer had come back in September — an unrelated MRI revealed bone lesions, holes caused by breast cancer that had metastasized and attacked her bones — she started on chemotherapy pills, one every day for three weeks, then a week without any. She also started taking an estrogen blocker to slow the spread of the cancer as well as getting bone-strengthening injections to encourage bone regrowth.

Being on such a cocktail of drugs hasn’t been easy.

“I’m on a roller coaster of side effects,” Ford said. “I never know how I’m going to feel the next day.”

The first time she battled cancer, she had chemo injections, and she got accustomed to the routine of the side effects. She’d feel bad for four or five days, then feel pretty good until her next injection.

This time, the side effects are more unpredictable, but having no energy and feeling fatigued have been consistent problems.

“Like six o’clock runs are not on my radar,” Ford said.

Same with running in the winter cold when training began for spring races.

“I just felt so, so sickly,” she said.

But the treatments have shown signs that they are working. 

In January, a bone scan revealed no more bone loss, no new metastasis of the cancer. Then another bone scan in February showed that the cancer had shrunk and the bone strengthening was working.

That news excited family and friends.

“I hope you’ll be cured,” many told Ford.

She has to tell them that her cancer can’t be cured. She will forever have cancer cells in her body.

“Remission is the goal,” she said. “Remission means it’s still present, it’s still there, but it’s just not active.”

Ford’s treatment is trending that way, but it isn’t there yet. Nothing is promised, and that is part of the reason why Ford decided she wanted to do the Memorial Marathon. The event has become part of her life in the spring, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Even if it will look vastly different than before.

“I may not have the energy to last me that whole 13 miles,” she said.

“If I’m not able to do it, I’m not going to give myself grief. If I quit at 10, I quit at 10. I’m gonna give it my best shot, and I’m not going to be dying if I don’t finish.” 

She laughed.

“I promised the girls that no PRs would be set.”

Unless, of course, there are personal records for selfies taken and laughs shared and memories made.

Wilkinson admits that she and some of Ford’s other runner friends are a bit concerned about how she’ll feel during the race. How will her pain level be for 13.1 miles? What about any unexpected side effects of medicines?

“We don’t want her to hurt herself,” Wilkinson said, “but I think mentally … this will mean just the world for her.

“If this helps her fight this a little bit more or just have more special memories … we’re not really giving up anything at all. We just want to be there for her.”

For Lori Ford, doing the half at Memorial Marathon isn’t just something she wants to do.

It’s something she needs to do.

“It’s not just a run,” she said. “It’s a part of my healing.”