Running with a purpose

If you want to bring attention to something in today’s age, it has to be done in style. It has to be big. It has to catch people’s eye.

So when Crestline resident Johnathon Stevens set out to merge two of his passions — the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama and running — he went big. “I thought, ‘Let’s just go for it,’” he said. 

And he signed up for the Leadville Trail 100 Run, an ultra marathon, to raise money and awareness for BCRFA.

Together with coworker Eddie Thomas, Stevens ventured out to Leadville, Colorado, in August to run 100 miles in what is dubbed the “Two-Mile-High City.” With the start line at about 10,200 feet in altitude, the race isn’t for the faint of heart — or the faint of legs. 

With a time constraint of 30 hours, the two ran 100 miles on an out-and-back trail that reached 12,200 feet in elevation at its highest peak and 9,200 feet at its lowest.

“I love to run. That is a passion of mine,” Stevens said. “It turned out something I’m also passionate about is bringing awareness to breast cancer.”

‘Distinguish yourself’

It was actually Thomas who suggested the Leadville Trail 100 Run, which travels through the Rocky Mountains, to fundraise for the nonprofit.

“There’s a lot of great national organizations … and they do a lot of marathons and team entry stuff,” he said. “I said, ‘Man, if you’re going to do something, you need to distinguish yourself.”

Stevens has a direct connection to BCRFA, a nonprofit to fund breast cancer research at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. It was started in 1996 by his mother-in-law, Dolly O’Neal, who was an 18-month breast cancer survivor at the time, and Bruce Sokol, whose wife D.D. was undergoing treatment for the same disease.

“Here I am, this close to charity. Why not raise money for it, doing what I’m doing?” Stevens said, hoping current and future funding can be put toward researching treatment and cures.

“I want my kids and grandkids to not suffer from this, and if they do, for there to be a cure,” he said.

Since its inception, the Foundation has raised more than $7.7 million for breast cancer research, and it even helped prolong O’Neal’s life after she was diagnosed a third time, through funding a trial drug that was given to her at UAB.

As of Aug. 15, Stevens and Thomas had raised nearly $33,000, which Stevens said has come from all over the country. They’re “donations because they have been touched by breast cancer in some way,” he said. It’s the cause that has brought others along on this journey and brought along encouragement from their employer, Cobbs Allen.

Stevens said he “has seen the incurable” after losing his father to an incurable disease and now knows scientists are close to being able to cure breast cancer, a disease that has touched hundreds of thousands of lives.

“We have the people, we have the researchers, we have the doctors; we need the funds,” he said. “It might be a drop in the bucket, but it’s a way.”

Knowing the cure could be so close is what Stevens said kept him going during his training. He first picked up endurance races when he was in college but said he’s been “running hard” for about three years now.

Pushing through training

Stevens’ first race was a half marathon, and then he completed a full road marathon and a half marathon trail run before learning he preferred trail runs. Then he jumped into the ultra world.

“It’s like any kind of hobby you have. You start to get into it, you start to watch documentaries on it and you start to do research on it,” he said.

Once he said he “could run with the living legend,” referring to Thomas, they talked about Leadville.

Thomas has competed in Leadville previously, but this year he worked to earn the title of Leadman.

To do so, Thomas had to complete the Leadville Trail Marathon, the Silver Rush 50 mountain bike, the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike, the Leadville 10K run and the Leadville Trail 100 Run. The first race started mid-June, and the last race was the ultra marathon with Stevens on Aug. 18-19. The 100-mile mountain bike took place the weekend before, on Aug. 11.

Thomas said he joined up with Stevens because they’ve become good friends over the years and he wanted to bring additional support and awareness to the BCRFA.

Together, they make up part of a small group of people from the South who will be competing in Colorado this fall. 

“When you look at the participation sheet, they list what state you’re from,” Stevens said. “You can count on one hand the people that are from the South.”

They were accompanied by their wives, family and friends, who acted as a support team along the way — and did so through their training — by bringing food and supplies to designated check points.

Most runners, Thomas said, were from out west, where they are used to the altitude and thin air. But both agreed Alabama has something Colorado doesn’t: humidity.

“You’ve got the thin air there, but here, people don’t understand the humidity factor,” Stevens said. “You can’t breathe either way.”

And to combat the steep climbs they faced along the Leadville trail, they worked on “power hiking” up steep hills and trails in Oak Mountain State Park or Red Mountain Park. 

It all added up to about 15 to 20 hours of training per week, averaging around 65 to 80 miles.

Two-fold accomplishment

During the run, they were in it for the long haul — running through day and night — and they wanted to try to stick together over the 100 miles.

“There’s going to be a bunch of highs and a bunch of lows,” Stevens said prior to the race. “Heck, when I go out to run eight miles, you always go in a dark place.”

But, he said, it’s how you come out of those lows to learn more about yourself and carry your personal journey. Thomas said they had some goal times in mind, but at the end of the day, they wanted to run a good race “not only for us, but for the BCRFA.” 

Stevens said he looked to his purpose of supporting O’Neal’s initial goals and raising money for the BCRFA.

It all goes beyond motivation and ego.

“Having a purpose is what gets us out of bed before 5 o’clock every morning to train for something like this … The main accomplishment will be, you know, just raising the funds,” Stevens said. “And then, you might do a little more than what you think you can do.”

While race results were not available as of press time, they can be found at leadvilleraceseries.com/results/leadvilletrail100runresults.