Sunshine

Breast-Cancer Survivor Alison Chavez Runs at the Back of the Pack, but She Is a Champion.

- Ariella Gintzler

Toweling dry her reddish-brown pixie cut, she scoots into the back seat of her car, where she exchanges sopping polypropylene for a rented evening gown, black and floor-length. In an hour she is due at a charity benefit dinner on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, a facet of her job as a TV production attorney. She checks her face in the rear-view mirror, adding earrings and a quick smear of lipstick, and then wiggles her feet into a pair of heels.

It’s hard to tell that just three years ago, Chavez was in the midst of one of the toughest battles anyone faces in their lifetime. She was 36 when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Despite surgeries and chemo treatments that left her too weak to walk up a flight of stairs, she refused to give up running. Now two years cancer free, she has earned two 100-mile finishes and hopes to prove that endurance sports are attainable even for those who are facing, or who have faced, serious illness. “Running and cancer are so intertwined for me,” she says. “Without running, I don’t know how I would have made it through cancer treatment. Without cancer, I don’t know if I would have had the drive to do all of these 100 mile races, to do the impossible.”

Growing up in southern California, Chavez was never the outdoorsy type. She swam competitively through high school, but according to her mother, Beth, “She was the little girl who didn’t even want to get dirty.” A straight-A student, Chavez attended Whittier College, and then moved to New York City to earn her graduate degree from NYU Law School. Her ambition was all consuming. She became an attorney in 2001, and stayed in New York to work for a large corporate firm, where she specialized in finance law.