Taking on Stage 4 Cancer and the Goggins Challenge – Marcos Jarvis

After receiving a life-changing diagnosis in 2019, Marcos Jarvis and his family began the painful process of accepting the devastating news. A keen sportsman and avid runner, Marcos studied his way through the biggest fight of his life, turning the negatives into positives with the power of the human mind.  Marcos plunged into ice baths, ran a duathlon with chemotherapy on his back, and swapped stress for Tai Chi as he reset his body, mind and lifestyle.

Marcos sat down with Ultrarunner magazine to discuss his journey, detailing the process of acceptance and why he took on the David Goggins 4 x 4 x 48 with ‘Stage 4’ cancer.

I was running Eastbourne Track Star Marathon, and I was experiencing some pain, but I am a runner, and what do runners do? We brush it off. We keep on going, driving the pain to the back of our minds as we head for the only thing that matters, the finish line. Unaware, at that time, that the discomfort would lead to tests and a diagnosis that would change my life forever.

Having always been a pretty fit guy, keen sportsman and builder by trade, my active lifestyle had put me in good physical form. I thought I was healthy, partially why being diagnosed with stage four cancer in October of 2019 came as such an enormous shock to my system.

My wife Hannah, myself and our son Archie, who was only three years old at the time, were all getting along quite happily in life when the diagnosis completely rocked our world, tipping it upside down and rattling us left and right, as we tried to process it all.

The doctors put the primary cause down to pancreatic cancer, with secondary liver cancer, stage four. They did not offer me a prognosis, and they told me that I needed to start chemotherapy straight away. The largest tumour was 12cm across and they told me that my cancer was incurable. It was confusing and a real mental strain to try and get my head around it all.