Vincent’s Story: “What I had left was not strength. It was defiance.”

At just 48 years old, Vincent Rossi faced two life-changing cancer diagnoses at the same time: colon cancer and an aggressive form of bladder cancer. What followed was a difficult journey filled with major surgeries, chemotherapy and multiple treatments after his bladder cancer returned as upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). Through every setback, he continued searching for the best options available, and after enrolling in a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University, he has achieved a complete response and remains cancer-free from his colon cancer five years later. This is his story:

I woke up at 4 a.m. in a hotel room in Texas. My first thought wasn’t about finish lines or medals. It was practical: I needed to use the restroom. That matters in an ultramarathon.

I came into running late, at 48, after decades of treating my body like something I could neglect indefinitely. By the time I lined up for my first marathon in Philadelphia, I had already been through bladder cancer and colon cancer; surgeries, procedures, immunotherapy infusions, sepsis scares and long hospital stays. They removed my bladder and rebuilt one from intestinal tissue. It works. It reminds me constantly that it works. The procedures carved me out from the inside, but they didn’t empty me.

Finishing the Philly marathon felt less like an athletic achievement than proof I was still here. Running wasn’t really a choice. It was the daily rhythm that kept me tethered to my own life.

Then, while I was training for a 50-miler in Colorado, thinking I was finally out of the woods, the cancer came back, this time in my kidneys, stage 3. A surgery date went on the calendar, and Colorado was suddenly too far away. The race was a year out, and I didn’t have a year.

I asked my coach how fast he could get me to the start line of a different 50-miler. Twelve weeks, he said, with real injury risk attached like a warning label. I needed something closer and sooner; 12 weeks instead of a year, which is not how anyone would recommend preparing for 50 miles. I posted on Reddit and laid out the situation plainly: the cancer timeline, the exhaustion, the goal. A man named Chris from San Antonio replied and said he would meet me at Rocky Raccoon and run it with me. That was all I needed to hear. The window would close the moment I went under, and I wanted to cross a finish line before that happened.

The course was three loops around a lake. On paper, it’s manageable. I had trained on the smooth concrete of Washington, DC streets, so trail running was new territory. The extended forecast promised cool air, which was important because treatment had damaged the glands responsible for sweating. My skin barely knew how to cool itself anymore.

Then the forecast changed: 83 degrees and climbing. At that point, the temperature didn’t matter. Flights were booked, the race was locked in and surgery was waiting. It had to happen now.

Race morning, the heat hit us before the sun came up. It was already 73 degrees. Standing there felt overheated. Chris met me, and we were surrounded by runners with full setups, tents popping up like small encampments. We had enough: a cooler, a blanket, a folding chair.

He looked at me, his gaze steady. “You can finish,” he said. I wasn’t convinced.

The first loop hit hard. The terrain itself, a chaotic tangle of roots and uneven ground, required constant attention, like navigating an unpredictable puzzle. By mile 10, I caught a nasty root and went down in a sprawl that knocked the wind out of me. Runners stopped, their concern tangible, but I waved them off. There was no time for anything but getting back on my feet.

Then, during a brief stop to urinate, I saw it: blood. Dark red and thick, not from effort, but from my cancer-filled kidneys beginning to ooze, I was shocked by this. Suddenly, even tracking hydration by urine color felt impossible; another variable ripped away.

Still, I kept moving. I finished the first loop at 16.7 miles, a distance that would be routine in training. Instead, it felt like I had already spent everything in reserve.

The second loop was worse. It wasn’t running; it was wading through pain. I fell again and again. At some point, my brain shut down the odometer. I stopped caring how much was left. In an ultramarathon, losing track of distance is losing the mental game itself. So I forced myself into a single mantra: run the mile you’re in.

The physical failure crept up slowly. Enormous blisters erupted across my heels and the balls of my feet. My quads started to vibrate, a deep, sickening tremor that threatened to shake me apart. The thought crept in: how do I do 30 more miles like this?

By the end of the second loop, I was done. My legs shook uncontrollably. My wife saw immediately: the race belt hanging loose, the glazed look in my eyes. She moved fast: ice packs, a bucket of cold water for my arms. I was dangerously close to heat stroke, maybe I already had it, and after everything my body had been through, the margin was razor thin.

Chris made the necessary call and stopped himself at 50K. He couldn’t risk it with his own training coming up for a 100-miler. For him, this was a training run. He spoke to me, giving measured advice, but I wasn’t really processing any of it. I was operating on fumes and sheer willpower. I could barely stand. 16.7 miles to go.

The third loop began in a fog. My wife joined me as my pacer, and suddenly the burden didn’t belong entirely to me anymore. She managed the rhythm, the timing, the decision-making. I just followed her pace, an anchor of exhaustion tethered to her steadiness.

At one point, while fixing a shoe, an abdominal cramp hit so hard it ripped a loud, gasping yell out of me. The sound startled us both into momentary stillness. I stood back up, swaying slightly, and kept moving.

As the miles ticked down, something shifted. A flicker of possibility ignited; not certain, but reachable. My wife checked her watch and told me we needed to move. Her tone changed. It lost its patience for caregiving and gained the sharp urgency of a coach giving final instructions. That shift was enough to snap me back into focus.

The race transformed into a desperate slog against the clock. She picked up the pace, slow for her, almost impossible for me. My legs felt like cement blocks. My feet were weeping blood, and I realized there was nothing left. This wasn’t just muscle fatigue. Something deeper was giving way.

Then, in a brief stretch of flat ground, the idea of finishing stopped being merely possible and became real. What I had left was not strength. It was defiance.

We hit the open trail section. We could hear it now: music, muffled but growing louder, vibrating through the damp earth. It was the sound of the finish line.

I locked onto my wife’s shoes and followed her in a trance-like rhythm. She led us past signs marking the final kilometers. At one point, she stepped on something long and dark. I screamed out, “Snake!” Startled by the shout, she glanced back, but neither of us broke stride. The small moment of fear dissolved instantly into sheer momentum.

In the last few miles, we began passing people. Runners who looked impossibly strong, half my age and twice my health, were slowing down, their faces masks of desperate effort. But they were fading. Our rhythm, whatever it was made of, kept us moving forward.

Finally, we emerged from the dense woods and hit the asphalt of the parking lot entrance. The music was deafening now. Bright lights flared ahead, reflecting off polished signs. Then I saw it: the finish line banner, vibrant red and white against the dark, starry Texas sky.

We crossed just after nine o’clock, near the back of the pack, but we were inside the cutoff.

Someone handed me the medal. I managed to smile. I made it back to our setup area and crumpled onto the ground. The pain vanished, replaced by a strange giddiness. My wife was already packing up. Two strangers had to lift me. It took me five agonizing minutes to get from the car to the hotel room door.

Later, sitting alone in the hotel, covered in gashes and deep bruises, I replayed the day. I saw not the race itself, but flashes of our last four years: the sterile scent of hospital corridors; the metallic tang of blood after major surgery; the terrifying flatness of fear when sepsis struck; the overwhelming fatigue of an endless waiting game.

And I saw my wife, in every one of those hospital rooms, at every treatment, in every one of those miles. Carrying what I couldn’t, so I could carry what was left. She had been running this the whole time, without a cutoff, without anyone handing her ice, without a medal at the end. I had just been the one people noticed.

Run the mile you’re in. Cancer taught me this. Running made me learn it again. You cannot think about the whole thing, the full scope of diagnosis, the entire race distance, the accumulated trauma. Try to hold it all, and it will crush you. All you can do is deal with the immediate reality: the next appointment, the next treatment cycle, the next few steps on this uneven trail.

The ultramarathon was the same. You just keep moving, one foot in front of the other, until finally, the line appears.

Vincent Rossi
Father, Husband, & Ultramarathoner
Website: https://cancercardioclub.com/