Why She Runs: Natick Marathoner Jessica Sowalsky Races for Dana-Farber

It was extremely unlikely that Jessica Sowalsky would have taken on a challenge such as running a marathon. She was told she’d be unable to, so she took on the obstacles head on. Born three months premature, Sowalsky suffered lower extremity and back issues throughout her childhood. Her doctors never thought she’d walk, let alone run. But after surgery, she joined track and field in high school and slowly but steadily built up her endurance.

Sowalsky is one of 38 runners from Natick signed up for this year’s Boston Marathon.

Her theme? “Determination to overcome adversity.”

She’s raising funds for the Claudia Adams Barr Program in the Innovative Basic Cancer Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Center.

“An adversity that has intersected my life through my friends, my family and the family of my friends is in fact cancer,” said Sowalsky. “Knowing that I can raise money through the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge to support research for studying potential cures of a disease many people in my life have had as their own adversities is another opportunity to take on another substantial challenge.”

While doctors could have never predicted she’d run a marathon, she can now boast that the 2015 Boston Marathon will be her third.

“I ran my first Boston Marathon in 2014 (first ever marathon) and the Hartford Marathon in 2014,” she said. “My personal dedication to overcoming obstacles that could be an adversity is the driving force behind my perseverance to do what others felt was impossible. Someone told me that I could never run a marathon, and I am going to prove them wrong.”

Sowalsky said that while she’s fortunate to have not been diagnosed with cancer, the disease has affected her life indirectly.

“Whether it was my best friend in college who lost his mother to breast cancer the day after his college graduation,” she said, “my camp counselor’s sister who lost her brother to a muscle cancer or my cousin who died from melanoma, I know these people did not ‘give up’ willingly and that they surely attempted to prove their doctors wrong as well. For those in my family who currently have cancer, whether it is my cousin with prostate cancer, my cousin with melanoma or my cousin with lung cancer, their survivorship is tribute to the amazing work of cancer researchers who have worked effortlessly to prove the impossible – that cancer is a disease that can be treated and cured.”

Sowalsky has a fund page set up here for those who wish to contribute.

“My personal obstacles pale in comparison to those facing a cancer patient but we have something in common – that we both want to beat the odds and achieve a substantial goal,” said Sowalsky. “Running for the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge is taking my passion for overcoming adversity and using it to help the future needs of others, whether they are my family, friends, or people I will never meet, by providing researchers with precious dollars to make cancer something no one will ever die from again.”