BRIGHTON, Colo. — In the "marathon" of life, Sarah Bursten was not sprinting toward accomplishing her first.
"It's been on my top 10 dreams, goals, wishes, if you will, for the last 10 years," she said.
But she sure jumped at the opportunity to run her first full marathon in one of the most famous and rigorous races in the world -- the New York City Marathon.
"Why now? Oh gosh, I hope I don't get emotional," she said, fighting back tears. "Why now, is because I was diagnosed a year ago with papillary thyroid cancer and when you feel like your health or your body is being taken away from you, you realize all of the sudden of all of the things that you're capable of and all of the dreams that you let go that maybe you just put on yourself. I would say, right at the beginning of being diagnosed, and then especially right at the end when I got my first clean scan, I wanted to go ahead and make the dream a reality."
Bursten ran the New York City Marathon less than one year after going through aggressive cancer treatment, but said the 26.2 was the harder of the two.
"At any point in time, you could quit. Right, I could walk off the course at any time. I didn't have that luxury with cancer, right, once you're in it, you're in it and you're going through it," she said. "So you have to be almost mentally stronger to go through the marathon piece."
It took a battle with a named disease and a fight to the finish line for Sarah Bursten to become the woman she always wanted to be: strong, fierce, and determined.
"When I crossed the finish line, I turned into a different person, or maybe through this entire journey or this entire year, I'm a totally different person than I was a year ago," she said. "I feel braver, stronger, I feel like there's nothing that I can't do and I can't accomplish. It may take some time and it may be years and years of work, but there's nothing that I can't accomplish that I wouldn't put my mind to, and my mind's not going to be the thing that holds me back, which I feel like is the thing that holds so many people back. And for me, it doesn't feel like that's a thing anymore."
Bursten ran the race as a member of Team V, and raised over $10,000 for the V Foundation. The V Foundation funds research for all cancer types, at leading cancer centers and research facilities nationwide.