The cancer had spread to her brain, but scans now show Kristina Baum is cancer-free: “It’s not gonna win today. I am going to keep pushing.”Kristina Baum, 37, had an inauspicious start to distance running: She signed up for her first race, the“I thought I might as well just show up and try it, and see as far I can get,” she tellsShe ran eight miles without stopping and walked the last two.
“Exercising during my first diagnosis was far too difficult. I did try, but recovery was incredibly difficult after a tough workout,” she says.For the next four years, she felt healthy and strong—“I was in the best shape of my life,” she says—supplementing her running with HIIT and, designed for any speed and any distance.]Then, at a regular checkup in June 2016, she learned her melanoma had come back: It was stage 4 and in her left kidney.
But by April 2017, her doctors cleared her once again. She had no evidence of the disease and was considered a “complete responder” to the medication.“I hate being weak,” she says. “I never want to feel that weak ever again.”“I started with walking. Walked half a mile, then a full [mile] that turned into six miles,” she says. “Then I started running. A half mile, then a full mile. Then I just said, ‘Well, I'm just going to try.
“It threw a huge wrench in my plans—I had hired a pro-triathlete coach and was training for my first Ironman,” she says. Baum has also signed up for the New York City Marathon in 2019 and hopes to complete the six World Major Abbott races in the future.