UK ultrarunner with terminal liver cancer facing another health setback

Despite being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, Mark Thornberry (@thorners125) continues to run. https://t.co/qy6Jss7uzj

— RunUltra (@RunUltra_UK) July 5, 2018

It looks like British ultrarunner Mark Thornberry’s health issues may have caught up with him again. Yesterday Thornberry tweeted a photo of a hospital bed with the comment “Hello (King’s College Hospital, in London), my old friend, I’ve come to stay with you again.”

Hello @KingsCollegeNHS my old friend
I’ve come to stay with you again… pic.twitter.com/5o8Yn7jPiu

— Mark Thornberry (@thorners125) July 4, 2018

RELATED:  Britain’s Grand Union Canal Race is deceptively pastoral

In May 2017, Thornberry, 58, of Ashtead, Surrey, was diagnosed with liver cancer. It had metastasized to his vascular system and was considered terminal. He couldn’t get to last year’s Grand Union Canal Race (the 145-mile (232K) ultramarathon from Birmingham to London’s Paddington Station along the Grand Union Canal towpath), but later in the year he was well enough to run its full length over three days, while raising money for the hospital that treated him. Britain’s ultrarunning community was overwhelmingly supportive, bringing him food and encouragement along his journey, and the race directors even gave him a finishers medal. He managed to raise over £75,000 for cancer research at London’s King’s College Hospital.

Thornberry loved the experience, and was determined to run the actual race. This year, his health relatively stable (and contrary to doctors’ expecctations), he entered, finishing 50 minutes ahead of the 45-hour time limit. 

Runner Sarah Cooke has published an interview with Thornberry on the Run Ultra site, describing how they met during the North Downs Way 100 in 2016, and how he supported her when she was exhausted and bonking. They kept in touch, and met at another British ultra the following year, just before Thornberry’s diagnosis.

He was a longtime road runner who switched from the roads to the trails when he turned 50 and felt it wise to give up rugby. The world of trail running and ultramarathons was completely new to him.

Last October, Thornberry ran the Javelina Jundred, a 100-mile race in Arizona. Then this year, the GUCR. (He claims the GUCR is tougher, and with “far better hallucinations.”) Thornberry has an aggressive race calendar planned for the remainder of this year and into next, including no fewer than five ultras, one of them a Western States qualifier.

Thornberry told Cooke that running kept him “sane, optimistic, focused and fit” and better able to cope with treatment and recovery than he would have been with less fitness.

Who knows what this latest setback will mean? We wish him the best possible outcome, and as much running as possible once he’s recovered from this current setback.

Click here to read the full interview.