PATRICIA O’HANLON DOESN’T LET BREAST CANCER STOP HER FROM RUNNING
Age
group ace Patricia O’Hanlon of Jersey City isn’t particularly
worried about the next championship race in the USATF-New
Jersey lineup.
When she crosses the finish line at the Ridgewood
Run 5K on Memorial Day,
she is almost assured of being a medal winner.
O’Hanlon’s time is also almost predictable. The sixty-one year old will finish the 3.1 mile race in under twenty-seven minutes and it is likely to be in the low 26 minute range. [ed. note - she was age group 2nd @ 26:25 - results ]
She might be running faster if it hadn’t been for a little matter of surgery last August that slowed her training for awhile. O’Hanlon was shocked when she learned that her mammogram and subsequent tests had revealed cancer cells in both breasts.
“I had no suspicion,” said O’Hanlon. “It doesn’t run in my family.”
Although one breast was positive for cancer and one was questionable, O’Hanlon opted for a double mastectomy.
“I said I’m not going to have that hanging around over my head. The surgeon pretty much agreed.”
With her surgery schedule for August 31 st, 2004, O’Hanlon entered and ran in a marathon in Edmonton Canada a week before.
“I didn’t know when I was going to be able to do another,” she said.
O’Hanlon’s surgeon expected her to take a couple of months off from running. She waited two weeks. Then she began a program of walking interspersed with running until she was back running full time.
At the end of September she entered her first post surgery race, the Liberty Waterfront 5K that accompanies the higher profile Liberty Waterfront Half-Marathon in Jersey City.
O’Hanlon would have preferred the half marathon but knew she wasn’t ready for that distance just yet. Her favorite race distance is probably the marathon.
She’s completed five New York City Marathons, and about twenty others. Her goal is to run a marathon in all of the fifty United States. Her most recent marathon was in Willimington, Delaware two weeks ago.
“I was hoping to do four and half [hours] and I did 4:24:55 and was first in my age group,” said O’Hanlon. “I was pretty happy with that.”
Her next scheduled marathon is in Portland Maine in October, but she is toying with the idea of squeezing in another one before October.
O’Hanlon says that she has always been physically active but about twenty years ago she added running to help her shed a few pounds and to stay in shape.
“Running appealed to me because I didn’t have to go to a class at a specific time, like for aerobics,” she said. “I could do it whenever and wherever I wanted. The flexibility really appealed to me.”
It didn’t take long for her to discover road racing and she has been at it ever since, often running in two races on a weekend.
“I have something of a competitive soul to begin with and I enjoy it,” she said.
O’Hanlon’s accomplishments brought her to the attention of the Raritan Valley Road Runners who were looking for fast masters runners to compete on their team. She was and is currently an active member of the South Hudson Spiked Shoe running club and the conflict caused her some concern.
“ Raritan Valley approached me and I really felt quite awkward about it,” she said. “I said no a couple of times. As their coordinators changed, each time the new coordinator asked me again.”
Once O’Hanlon learned that it was entirely permissible to belong to more than one running club, as long as she competes for only one of them, she relented. O’Hanlon is always promoting running to whoever she meets and is impatient with excuses.
“People say, ‘I wish I could do that,’ and I say, ‘Well, wishing isn’t going to make it happen. Get a pair of running shoes and let’s go!’”
O’Hanlon puts in about thirty miles per week of training, including the miles she runs in races. When she is building up for a marathon her distance increases, and she heads out the door in Jersey City and north past the George Washington Bridge. Her friends assure her that it is over twenty miles round trip.
At her turnaround point on these long runs she stops and buys a banana or some other fuel for the return trip. One of her fuel stops lead to a serious clash of perception on what is doable and what is not.
“I was dripping sweat, and this little old lady is at the counter, and she asked me if I was running,” relates O’Hanlon. “I said, yes, I’m on my way back to Jersey City. She looked at me and her mouth dropped open, and she said. ‘In the same day!’”
Among her favorite races is the September Liberty Waterfront Half Marathon that leaves from Jersey City and snakes through Liberty State Park. She also has high praise for a race that was new in 2004 in Jersey City, the Newport 10,000.
“ I don’t think they had nearly as big a turnout that they were hoping for and what I think they should have gotten,” she said.
“You expect that there will be more [this year]. “I think its reputation went out that they did a really good job. I’m looking forward to it,”
Wherever O’Hanlon runs and races, she will be the woman to watch in her division. A little side trip for breast cancer surgery isn’t going to discourage a woman who races every weekend, has completed over twenty marathons and plans to run at least thirty more.
Photo copyright Janice Reid from 2004 USATF-NJ 8K Cross-Country Chanpionships.
Text originally published in the JERSEY JOURNAL of Hudson County on June 2, 2005
Copyright Madeline Bost, 2005