Her ‘Pimple’ Was Stage 3 Melanoma. Its Recurrence Sparked Her to Run Her First Marathon – runnersworld.com

Kristina Baum, 37, had an inauspicious start to distance running: She signed up for her first race, the Army Ten Miler, back in 2006 with zero training.

“I thought I might as well just show up and try it, and see as far I can get,” she tells Runner’s World.

She ran eight miles without stopping and walked the last two. The physical after-effects were rough—she threw up twice, and was in pain for days—but finishing the race completely hooked her on running.

So she started training, and ran the Houston Half Marathon in 2007 and 2009. But at the same time, her professional career was taking off, and racing hit the back burner. She had pursued a career in communications in Washington, D.C., where she currently serves as the communications director for the House Natural Resources Committee, and was climbing the ladder fast.

The ‘Pimple’ That Started It All

Then in 2012, she went to the doctor for a bad chest cold. But her doctor noticed something on her arm that was concerning: It was a colorless spot that looked like a pimple or a wart. It was something Baum had noticed three months before, but didn’t think much of.

Her doctor recommended that Baum go for a biopsy, but she put it off for three months because of her crazy work schedule. Besides, she wasn’t having any symptoms, so she didn’t think it was something that needed to be taken care of urgently.

Six days after her biopsy in September of 2012, she got the call with the results: stage 3 melanoma, a type of skin cancer that is less common than basal cell or squamous cell carcinomas, but more dangerous because it is much more likely to spread.

“It was one of those life-changing calls. I was crying, trying to write things down,” she says. “I didn’t even really know what melanoma was at the time.”

Two days after her diagnosis, Baum ran a 5K, but the treatment that year—which included two surgeries, one to remove the cancer in October 2012, and another the next month to remove cancerous lymph nodes—would be rough.

“Exercising during my first diagnosis was far too difficult. I did try, but recovery was incredibly difficult after a tough workout,” she says.

After her treatments, though, she was told she was N.E.D. (or what most know as “no evidence of disease.”)

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 cross-training, including Kayla Itsines’s program.

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Courtesy of Kristina Baum

Learning the Cancer Came Back

Then, at a regular checkup in June 2016, she learned her melanoma had come back: It was stage 4 and in her left kidney.

Her treatment—a phase-one clinical trial of a non-FDA approved drug made by Bristol Myers Squib, known as anti-LAG3, combined with Nivolumab (FDA approved)—left her extremely weak and sick.

“I was on prednisone, which basically destroys your muscle mass—it just wipes you out. It causes you to gain weight, experience blurry vision,” she says.

The clinical trial drug worked, but it completely destroyed her fitness.

“If I was in the shower trying to wash my hair, I barely had the strength to hold my arms up,” she says.

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.

That spurred her to get strong.

“I hate being weak,” she says. “I never want to feel that weak ever again.”

So she started small, pulling on an old pair of Nikes.

“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.’So I signed up for the Pancreatic Cancer 5K that year [2017] and gave it a shot.”

Courtesy of Kristina Baum

After that, she was running 5Ks every weekend.

“It just felt really great to be out and running, feeling stronger,” she says.

Then a friend brought up a new challenge when she asked if she wanted to try a triathlon. She completed her first in October of 2017.

“I did a master swim class to learned how to competitively swim. It snowballed from there,” she says. “I ran seven half marathons, triathlon—I was running about 9-minute miles. I felt great.”

On October 28, 2018, she ran her first marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon. At mile 17, it hit her that not too long ago, she was in the hospital, listening to beeping machines and wondering if she would die, she remembers. She finished the race in 4:35:19.

Dealing With a Second Recurrence

She had started training for the Ironman Maryland when she went to the doctor for a routine checkup in December of 2018.

Baum wasn’t feeling quite right—she felt more tired than usual, but thought that was just due to her training. She also was experiencing vertigo, a condition that made her feel dizzy.

Her doctor sent her for a MRI scan, but because she had a clear CT scan the month before, she almost didn’t go for it.

“But they called the next day after my MRI, and I had to go back on treatment,” she says.

Her cancer had returned. This time, it had metastasized to her brain.

“It threw a huge wrench in my plans—I had hired a pro-triathlete coach and was training for my first Ironman,” she says.

She had to abandon her race at the suggestion of her oncologist, and has since started her second clinical trial treatment. She received CyberKnife radiation in January 2019 to shrink (and hopefully eliminate) the tumor in her brain, and she receives immunotherapy drug Opdivo—which interferes with the growth and spread of any cancer cells—once a month at Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Just this past Monday, though, she received the news she was hoping for: Her latest brain MRI showed no evidence of cancer. She will continue to remain on treatment for now.

Courtesy of Kristina Baum

While she’s battling extreme fatigue, she hasn’t let it stop her from lacing up her Topo Ultrafly 2s and running. She ran a 10-miler at the beginner of March, had a treatment the next weekend, and the weekend after that, finished the NYC Half Marathon.

“The half marathon is my favorite distance, and I just had to accept I’m probably not going to get the PR I want,” she says. “I just want to finish the race.”

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.

She is still working with her training coach, Angela Naeth, who understands what it’s like to fight for health—she’s battling Lyme disease—and who also leads the team Baum trains with called I Race Like A Girl. She has Baum running three times a week, swimming once or twice a week, biking once a week, and doing strength workouts twice a week. But she’s learned to listen to her body and take it a day at a time.

“Normally the day after immunotherapy treatment is rough. Some days I’m just really wiped out. I recently bought a road ID in case something happens while I’m out training. I wear it a lot—but I’ve decided I’m going to keep going,” she says.

As her treatment continues, she’s relied on her faith to help her with the physical and spiritual strength she’s needed to get through it.

“God definitely gives me ability to run each day. Each day I’m incredibly grateful for it. I think about the days when I couldn’t run at all, and what I wouldn’t give to just be able to,” she says. “I love the feeling of getting lost in a long run. To feel your breath, to think, to pray, to get angry or cry. It’s a big way I can process everything and decompress,” she says.

And most importantly, it makes her feel strong.

“When you feel as weak as I have, feeling strong is super important. Being able to keep running allows me to feel like myself. Without that, my quality of life just isn’t the same,” she says.

She’s motivated not only by her own fight, but to do what she can to find a cure for melanoma. In fact, she’s trying to raise money for melanoma research—she has been able to participate in two clinical trials—through the Melanoma Research Alliance.

“But for me, it’s not just about beating cancer medically. I think you beat cancer by how well you live your life each day, and the more you live in fear, it prevents you from doing what you’re meant to do,” she says. “Cancer is like having a terrorist living in my body, but it’s not gonna win today, and I am going to keep pushing. And I want other people fighting this to know they can be strong and push forward, too.”