Matt Hazard always dreamed of running the Boston Marathon. Of climbing the famed Heartbreak Hill at Mile 20, of rounding the corner of Boylston Street among throngs of supporters and sprinting through the finish line.
“It’s just always been the top of the mountain,” Hazard said. “If you’re going to set your sights on something, you might as well shoot for the top.”
That was the dream long before he got cancer.
Hazard grew up running. He spent a year on the cross country team and running middle distances at Southern Oregon University. But his last serious training attempt was derailed by a ruptured appendix in 2016.
Later that year he married his wife, Amanda. The couple traveled to the Philippines, Portugal, Italy and Hawaii. He gained nearly 50 pounds. They became parents to two boys and fell into the rhythm of family, career, life. Hazard stopped running in any serious way.
“Goal sidelined,” he said.
But a couple of years ago, Hazard used his 40th birthday as motivation to finally get serious about his dream.
Before he could run the Boston Marathon, he would need to run a marathon, period.
He started waking up at 4 a.m. to go for long training runs near his Tualatin home. Not jogs. Runs. He ran and ran and ran.
Last spring, he registered for his first marathon. It would be in Eugene, his hometown, on April 28.
A medical obstacle
Five days before the race, Hazard used the restroom and discovered blood in the toilet. Weeks earlier, his cousin, Koree Anderson, had been diagnosed with colon cancer.
But Hazard’s symptoms subsided after a couple of days and he stubbornly pushed them from his mind. He raced in Eugene, crossing the finish line in just under 3 hours and nine minutes — qualifying for Boston by barely one minute.
A month later, his symptoms returned.
He scheduled a colonoscopy for the end of May. However, because he was under 45, insurance would not cover the steep cost. He canceled the procedure.
Matt Hazard, right, with cousin Koree Anderson, center and an uncle, Chuck Anderson. Koree Anderson, who also battled colorectal cancer, died in November 2024.Courtesy of Matt Hazard
Koree was angry about that and made sure his cousin knew it. So, even though doctors warned him that he was quite likely dealing with a case of internal hemorrhoids, Hazard scheduled another colonoscopy and paid for it out of pocket.
When he woke up in the hospital bed on June 19, Amanda was in the room. A doctor came in and explained that the exam had revealed colorectal cancer.
Hazard had just turned 40, was in the best shape of his life and had just run a marathon. He had qualified for Boston! And he might be dying.
His eyes filled with tears.
“I turned to my wife,” Hazard recalled, “and I said, ‘I’m gonna fight.’”
A week later, a scan revealed cancer on his liver. It was stage 4, the same as Koree.
They were cousins but grew up like brothers. They graduated together from Marist High School in 2002. And now they were fighting the same illness.
“I told him he’s not alone anymore,” Hazard said. “We’re going to do this together.”
Hazard cried gently as he described his journey. Statistics vary, but the five-year survival rate for his form of cancer is around 5%.
“My way to fight,” he said, “was to keep running.”
Hazard underwent eight rounds of intense chemotherapy starting in July. He would go in for treatment on a Wednesday, get knocked flat on his back for four days, then resume training. He would run — and run and run and run — every day for 10 days until it was time for the next treatment, when he would be knocked down again. Then he’d start up all over.
“There were a couple times where it took me a couple days to get my feet back under me,” he said.
Doctors were skeptical, but none ever suggested he should stop training.
“Every time I’d ask them,” Hazard said, “they’d kind of get this bewildered, surprised look on their face, and say, ‘Yeah, if you feel good enough. I guess.’
“I just did it. I didn’t let it hold me back.”
When he completed chemotherapy, doctors scheduled surgery to remove the tumor from his liver on Nov. 12.
Four days before Hazard’s procedure, Koree Anderson, died at a cancer treatment center in Arizona. He was 40.
“His body just continued to shut down and he couldn’t fight any longer,” Hazard said.
Koree had pushed Hazard to get tested. He felt he owed him his life.
Following surgery, Hazard could not run for eight weeks. He went in for 27 rounds of radiation while taking chemo pills. All along, he stuck to his plan to run Boston.
“Even up until this last round of radiation and chemo I didn’t know how my body was going to react,” Hazard said.
Each time he met with doctors, he would ask the same question: “When can I start running again?”
After he ran in Eugene last spring, organizers in Boston lowered their qualifying mark by nearly seven minutes. Hazard’s time was no longer good enough. But he discovered that he could race on a team for charity and he linked up with a group called TargetCancer and raised nearly $15,000 for rare cancer research.
‘Come on, Matthew!’
On Monday morning, Hazard stood among more than 28,000 runners at the starting line along a rural highway outside of Boston. His eyes welled again with tears.
He’d made it.
“It’s just this place,” he said. “This place is special.”
He ran past crowds packed several rows deep of people cheering him on. His legs burned.
“There were times I just wanted to quit,” Hazard said.
Twenty miles in he reached Heartbreak Hill.
Hazard was exhausted. Perhaps the toll of the previous year, the illness inside of him and the medicine it took to destroy it, was stronger than his will.
“I was just done,” he said. “Cooked. Those hills destroyed me.”
But then he thought of Koree.
“He was definitely in my ear, saying, ‘Come on, Matthew!’”
He thought of his 67-year-old mother, Susan Hazard, who is battling breast cancer and has endured years of treatment, including a double mastectomy and four rounds of chemo.
“They were definitely with me,” he said.
Hazard pushed through, and as he rounded the corner on Boylston, the crowd erupted like he’d imagined.
He raised his arms in triumph as he crossed the finish line.
His final time: 3 hours, 14 minutes, 42 seconds.
“It was just a culmination of a lot of work,” he said.
He FaceTimed with his sons back home in Tualatin. They wanted to see the medal. Colton is 6 and Easton is 4. Colton liked to boast, “My daddy is racing in the biggest marathon in the world!”
They inspired him to run, too.
“I mean, you want to see your kids grow up, right?” Hazard said, crying.
The next day, he and Amanda went to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox host the Seattle Mariners. He ate a lobster roll. He wore his medal around his neck and on his left arm a wristband honoring Koree. His cousin always wanted to visit the historic ballpark.
“It was on his bucket list,” he said.
Now that Hazard has completed the Boston Marathon, his own dreams have expanded. He wants to complete the World Marathon Majors, which would require him to race in Chicago, New York, Tokyo, London, Berlin and Sydney.
He believes running, as much as any medical intervention, saved his life.
“Whether it really did or not,” he said, “it’s kept me grounded. It’s kept me motivated. It’s kept my eye on a prize. It’s just kept me going.”
He figures completing the global circuit will take him at least 10 years, cancer be damned.
“We’re still in the thick of it,” he said. “We don’t know if I’ve beat it yet.”
His last MRI showed something that might be remnants of a disease that could recur or merely scar tissue.
Either way, he will keep running.
— Bill Oram is the sports columnist at The Oregonian/OregonLive.