News

Lung cancer survivor Tom Murphy and daughter Julia Tom Murphy ran the Brooklyn Airbnb Half Marathon Saturday.

He didn’t wear a cape. There was no “S” on his chest. And, along the way, he didn’t leap over any buildings – tall or short.

But as far as his daughter, Julia, is concerned, step by step her dad, the race’s 26,343rd finisher, revealed his true self.

“He’s always been Superman in my mind. This only proved it,” she said.

The 58-year-old Bronxville resident registered for his fourth Brooklyn Airbnb Half on Jan. 22. Later that day, a biopsy of his right lung came back positive for cancer.

The biopsy followed CT scans he and three of his siblings underwent after their sister, Kathleen Murphy, like Tom a non-smoker and runner, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer.

Tom Murphy’s cancer was Stage 1, 7 millimeters by 7 millimeters -- too small to be detected by an X-ray.

But what followed wasn’t small. On Feb. 3, Dr. Brendon Stiles at Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian removed his lung’s right upper lobe – 40 percent of that lung.

That was a Wednesday.

If you want to know about Murphy’s makeup, think about this: That Monday, he was back at work in Manhattan.

Since he and Julia had become inspired watching Julia’s sister, Amelia, run the 2013 Los Angeles Marathon, the one-time casual runner had logged about 20-25 miles a week, many of those miles coming after he’d take the 4:54 a.m. train into Grand Central, so that he and Julia could do 6 a.m. runs in Central Park before Tom went to his job as a Bloomberg sales manager and Julia, who lives in Manhattan, to hers as a law firm event specialist.

Together, they’d run the 2013 New York City Marathon (raising money for autism), three Airbnb Halfs, one New York City Half Marathon and at least 15 shorter races.

Brendon Stiles, M.D. But Stiles warned Murphy surgery would cost him 25 percent to 30 percent of his lung capacity, and after climbing the stairs from Grand Central’s lower level to the main concourse that Monday, the New York Road Runners member had to stop to rest.

While Stiles said if he trained he could run the Brooklyn Half, things didn’t get a whole lot better short-term.

“A week after surgery I had a hard time walking three blocks. I had to stop. I’d find myself out of breath,” Murphy said.

The first time he tried to run, he figured he’d do a mile. He made it two blocks, then slowly walked home.

But Murphy hasn’t earned Julia’s admiration by being a quitter.

“In the beginning of March, I decided I had to get out there and kind of force myself to do it, to push through,” said Murphy, who runs for health and a challenge but never for fun, explaining, “the next step has always been more painful than the last.”

“You grit your teeth and get through it,” he explained.

So that’s how he’d tackle getting back into training and racing.

But Julia, who ran cross country for coach Jim Mitchell at Bronxville High (Class of 2008), was worried. Their training runs were “a bonding experience, a time I treasure,” she said.

“Somewhat selfishly, I realized maybe we’d never run together again,” she said.

But last month, they ran a four-mile lung cancer benefit, Murphy noting his T-shirt revealed that he and his sister are not in the minority -- that 60 percent of those who get lung cancer never smoked.

While running alongside her dad, Julia felt like she was “dreaming,” seeing “one impossible idea coming to life.”

“The four-miler was important because it made me less scared of running in a race,” Murphy said.  "It was pretty meaningful and it convinced me I had a shot to run in Brooklyn.

His fastest half marathon has been 2 hours and 12 minutes. Saturday, his net time was 2:54.54. He wanted better.

“This is him being superhuman,” said Julia, who added, “whenever he was struggling, I’d turn to him and say, ‘You’re the only man here with less than two lungs but you’re fighting and continuing to run. You’re still keeping up and proving you can be the person you were before.’

“It was just so nuts. It was unbelievable. He was pushing himself to every extreme possible.”

He was also pushing himself to believe in himself again as a long-distance runner.

“The Brooklyn Half broke my fear,” Murphy said.

His legs began hurting after 10 miles, so he’ll increase his mileage to 30 per week.

Murphy’s sister is also doing what doesn’t seem possible. Stage 4 lung cancer usually means “six months and done,” Murphy said. But she was diagnosed in March 2015 and is responding so well to immunotherapy at Sloan Kettering that she has returned to work (she’s a physician) and walks six to seven miles a day.

“She’s doing amazingly well and is really an inspiration to me,” Murphy said.

His summer calendar includes a three-mile run for the Lung Cancer Research Foundation on which Stiles serves.

Then there may be a race in Vermont and Murphy will run his second NYC Marathon with Julia. If there are such things as miracles, maybe he’ll challenge his nagging 2013 time (5 hours, 20 seconds, when he wanted to break five hours).

Either way, just by tackling the marathon, Murphy will be, in his daughter’s eyes and in the eyes of many others, the guy in the cape, with the "S" on his chest.

“He just continues to blow everything out of the water, so he’s Superman,” Julia said. “Now I know if he wants to do something, nothing is going to stop him.”

This article first appeared on lohud.com. Read the original here.