Cancer survivor Suzanne Stratton to run in 2022 Canberra Marathon Festival

Suzanne Stratton will compete in the upcoming Canberra Marathon Festival 10km fun run, almost two years after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. A hip replacement, chemotherapy, radiation, and multiple surgeries were not enough to stem her verve for life.

While she didn't start running until her late 40s, the steady thud of her feet on the ground and resulting quiet sense of achievement soon became a major part of her life.

"[Running] was something that gave me a great sense of achievement, and of feeling alive and doing something," Ms Stratton said.

"Then cancer came along and all of that changed. There was a lot of doubt about if I would ever be able to run again."

In 2020, Mrs Stratton found a lump in her breast and headed straight to a GP, after a mammogram and a biopsy, she heard the dreaded words: "it's cancer".

Soon after a lesion was discovered on her hip bone. The breast cancer was metastatic and had spread, a condition which is often untreatable.

Mrs Stratton was stunned. Only two days prior she had ran 18km with no pain.

What followed was a long gruelling journey towards recovery, but before chemotherapy could begin the runner needed a hip replacement.

Her doctor reassured the active woman that after recovery she could "do things like skiing and playing tennis and ice skating and playing soccer".

Mrs Stratton asked: "What about running?"

The answer: "No running".

Despite warnings the activity could result in the hip replacement wearing out in 15 rather than 20 years, Mrs Stratton was determined; running was simply too important to give up.

"Running is important to me, you do these things to enjoy your life not to just have a life," she said.

"I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and I don't want to die with a perfect hip."

After the replacement came five months of chemotherapy and two-and-a-half weeks of radiation on her femur bone.

"As soon as I finished chemo, I went from the chemo suite down to the lake and my husband and I walked," she said.

"At the start that was on crutches and then after that leaning on him just to keep moving."

Not long after, in February 2021, Mrs Stratton had surgery to remove both her breasts. Less than a month later she underwent another round of radiation and chemotherapy.

After what seemed like endless treatments and surgeries, she said her body felt "broken".

"I had no strength at all in my glutes, my hamstrings, my quads from the surgery, but then also from the radiation. [The treatment] does horrible things - great things - but it also does some damage."

After months of painstaking work with a sports physiologist, she is ready to tackle the 10 kilometre fun run.

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Mrs Stratton started off slowly, running for three lots of 30 seconds at a time and built up her strength.

The runner described the first time she was able to work up to a light jog - if only for a few seconds.

"It was the most astonishing moment ... a mixture of elation and gratitude and it was just incredible," Mrs Stratton said.

"There were many times where I thought: I'm never going to be able to do this, it's just not going to happen, it's just too hard.

"But I'm really stubborn. I was never gonna give up."

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