Mile 10: Her front tire bursts. She patches it up, hops back on her bike and continues pedaling. Mile 17: A hill she respectfully refers to as the “devil” looms ahead. A teammate drives by in his Jeep ready to pick her up and call it a day, but still, she refuses to quit. It was her first day, but she never complained. Mile 25: Kellian Kennedy completes the ride in 2 hours, 38 minutes.
Today, Kennedy, a freshman history major, speeds through the bike course in less than two hours. She trains six times a week, dividing equal time among swimming, biking and running in preparation for the Columbia Triathlon May 22, an athletic showcase consisting of a 1.5-kilometer swim, a 41-kilometer bike ride and a 10-kilometer run.
“It’s one of the top-10 hardest triathlons in the country,” said Patti Harden, Kennedy’s coach.
But Kennedy is no stranger to adversity. The “devil” is a dirt mound compared to the mountains she has climbed.
Nine years ago, at age 11, doctors diagnosed Kennedy with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells common among children. Her bone marrow began producing cancer cells instead of healthy white bloods cell, which crowded out healthy white and red blood cells and left behind a weakened immune system.
It started out as a few measly nose bleeds and bruises suffered on the soccer field, but following a bone marrow biopsy, doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore delivered Kennedy the troubling news.
“You really don’t get a chance to feel anything. You’re kind of in shock and your dealing with it,” Kennedy said. “So much is thrown at you at one time. You kind of forget what your life was like because this becomes your life.”
Kennedy endured three years of chemotherapy, battling three episodes of hair loss, blood infection and temporary diabetes, side effects of the treatment.
But the treatments failed. She relapsed.
“I was devastated. It felt like I had wasted two and a half years of my life,” Kennedy said. “The worst part was I knew how bad chemotherapy was and I knew I had to do it again.”
But Kennedy did not do it again.
“Chemotherapy is a lot of very powerful drugs that have all kinds of serious side effects that can even kill you,” said Lisa Fronc, Kennedy’s pediatrician since birth. “If you can’t give somebody a likelihood that it’s gonna help them, then it’s not wise to do.”
A glimmer of hope shined across the country at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, one of the leading bone marrow transplant centers in the nation.
Through an international registry, the center matched Kennedy with a bone marrow donor in Germany in October 1999.
The new bone marrow served as Kennedy’s new, cancer-free immune system. Like in all transplants, there is the potential that the body will reject the new organ. Consequently, Kennedy developed graph versus host disease, her body’s response to the new bone marrow.
Some patients’ bodies cope with the disease, but Kennedy’s body did not. Her skin turned black and her eyes red from popped blood vessels.
Doctors controlled the disease with an experimental drug, and in March 2000, Kennedy returned to her home in Gambrills.
With a new immune system, Kennedy’s body contracted diseases that normal 15-year-old immune systems would normally counteract. In her junior year in high school, she contracted chicken pox. Every virus circling the hallways snuck its way into her body.
But nowadays Kennedy is cancer-free and feeling great.
“It’s kind of different. I haven’t been to the hospital in six months and that’s huge,” Kennedy said. “I haven’t done that in forever.”
Recharged and with a second chance at life, Kennedy wastes little time. She trains six days a week at the university and with her Team in Training teammates on the weekends at Centennial Park in Columbia, the site of the triathlon on May 22.
Team in Training, a function of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, is the world’s largest endurance training program. With more than 60 chapters nationwide, the organization trains novice athletes to run 100-mile bike rides, marathons, triathlons and Iron Mans while its participants raise money for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma research. The program has raised more than a half billion dollars.
In 1997, at age 13, Kellian was the team’s honorary patient, the athletes’ motivation to push their bodies to new limits. She began delivering speeches at the team’s annual breakfasts, describing the hardships she endured.
At a breakfast January 2005, after speaking with the team, Kennedy decided to do the swim part of the triathlon, but the team’s coordinator said it was “all or nothing.” Kennedy chose “all.”
She would become part of the team that once ran for her, that once looked to her for motivation. Now she could give back.
“It’s kind of like I finally get to contribute to the cure,” she said. “I finally get to do something about all this.”
Kennedy is a rare case. Few Team in Training athletes have survived cancer, said Liz Olson, the program’s press secretary.
“It makes the entire experience of raising money for a cause much more meaningful for the other participants on the team because they can look at a face in the crowd of runners and see the face of the disease and see what they’re running for,” Olson said.
Chris Stokes, one of Kennedy’s 74 teammates, lost his 25-month old son, Matthew, to leukemia. Team in Training allows him to take some of the focus off his loss and redirect to a goal, he said.
“Knowing what she’s gone through and seeing her persevere to take the challenge head on,” Stokes said, “It’s nothing short of miraculous.”
Kennedy has made a lasting impression on many people’s lives, especially her pediatrician’s.
“She’s one of the most inspirational people I know,” said Fronc, who was so inspired by Kennedy she joined Team in Training in 1999 when Kennedy was in Seattle. “I’m just as proud of Kellian as her parents are. She’s just a remarkable kid. You can see she’s just meant for bigger things.”
Kennedy is taking 17 credits, and faces three final tests and three final papers this week. But the Dean’s List honoree is more worried about the triathlon than her GPA.
“I’m really nervous and scared because it’s a really long distance,” she said. “I know I will do it just because I’m so determined and I’ve spent this much time and I’m damn well gonna finish.”
Kennedy’s father, John, joined Team in Training in 1997 when the team named his daughter its honorary patient. In addition to completing the Columbia Triathlon, he will brave a half Iron Man in June and a full Iron Man in Wisconsin in September, a race consisting of a 2.5 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and a full 26-mile marathon.
He hopes his daughter will follow him to Wisconsin, but first she must first conquer the “devil” in Columbia.
When asked if Kennedy will finish the race, her coach Patti Harden responded:
“Yeah, absolutely. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
