A Message From Our Founder, Jon Morgan Kresken:
On April 12, 2011, my mom was diagnosed with Metastatic “Stage IV” Breast Cancer (MBC); I was in high school at the time. Like any family who has a family member living with cancer, the news came quickly and without reason. She didn’t deserve a life threating disease.
When the news of Cancer hit my mom’s ears, she immediately sought to do everything to beat it. My mom always says she is “living with cancer,” which shows her charisma, courage, and strong heart. So far she has beaten the statistics and I am so thankful.My mom is the most genuine, generous, and caring woman I know. She works behind the scenes making sure everyone else’s lives are running smoothly. What really gets me about her is that she never, I mean never, asks for anything in return.
In these past six years, my mom has been able to see me graduate high school, graduate college, travel the world, and move away from home and start a big person job in NYC.
While I am so fortunate that she has been here for my life defining moments, I am very thankful she has been here for the past six years to give me advice on life. My mom truly is an intuitive, creative, and caring soul that chooses to see the good in everything. She taught me compassion and gave me wisdom that I will carry with me for the rest of my days.
I can’t express enough how important of a role my mother has played in my life. She is my daily inspiration, my role model, my support, and most importantly my best friend.While my experience brought fear and resentment, it also brought the courage to act. My research into MBC led me to some appalling statistics. Currently, 30% of breast cancer patients will metastasize, with only 2-5% of overall breast cancer research funding going to MBC. Each day in the United States, an average of 113 people die of MBC. We want to change those stastistics.
In 2017, I set out on a mission I called Marathons For Mom – to complete 6 marathons (in honor of the 6th year of my mom living with MBC), with the goal of spreading awareness and raising $3,000. By the end of the year, all marathons were completed, I established a Marathons For Mom team of runners, and we raised over $10,000 given directly to MBC research.
Over the course of the year, I learned the power of spreading awareness. Through the people I shared my story with and enlightened with the jarring statistics, I saw firsthand the absence of knowledge around metastatic breast cancer. This experience inspired me to continue the journey by creating Racing for MBC in order to expand our reach.
The hardships of running bring support from those around you pushing you to keep going – “that is how you run a marathon, and that is how you fight cancer” – Catherine Kresken
