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Anchorage marathoner completes 50-state quest -- between cancer treatments

On the day before his 69th birthday, Anchorage runner Chuck Harvey completed a journey that began more than four years ago and took him to a marathon in every state.

With wife Susan serving as navigator and planner, the Anchorage man completed his quest Saturday when he finished the Baltimore Running Festival marathon in 4 hours, 51 minutes. During his tour of America, Harvey put more than 130,000 miles on the family mini-van and traveled back and forth between Alaska and the Lower 48 numerous times.

Along the way, he made two detours for cancer treatment.

In the summer of 2012, 13 states into his project, Harvey was diagnosed with sarcoma after discovering a lump on his arm. After six months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment in Seattle, he ran the Charleston Marathon in 5:44 and crossed South Carolina off his list.

A year later, 27 states into his pursuit, Harvey returned to the hospital for his nine-month checkup and learned the cancer returned, this time in one of his lungs. He had surgery on Jan. 31 of this year and on March 15 he completed the Rock-n-Roll Marathon in Washington, D.C.

"They removed the spot on my lung and I've run 23 since then," Harvey said Wednesday by phone while traveling with Susan from Maryland to Las Vegas, where they own a condo. "I actually ran 24, because I ran one right before they found the spot on my lung."

The cancer diagnosis accelerated Harvey's fast-and-furious race to join the 50 states club. The Baltimore marathon on Saturday marked his sixth in eight days, a stretch that included 26.2-mile races in Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina (his second in that state), North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

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"His doctors think he's not human," daughter Aimee Mills said.

Harvey is an accidental marathon man. A retired general contractor and North Slope worker, he had long been a runner but didn't become a racer until 2006, at the urging of his brother Doug and their mutual friend, Greg Peterson.

"Long story short, they asked me if I could run a half-marathon about nine years ago and I said I didn't want to spend that much money, and they paid for me," Harvey said. "Then I just started running. I did four marathons in Anchorage and then I qualified for Boston. And that changed everything when I ran there."

At the 2010 Boston Marathon, he got a taste of big-city races and throngs of fans cheering runners every step of the way. The idea of running a marathon in every state took root.

Then came his first cancer diagnosis. His treatment cycle involved five straight days of in-patient chemotherapy at the University of Washington hospital, followed by three weeks off, then five more days of chemo, and so on.

"We were in Seattle for six months and he ran a half-marathon and that was it," Susan said by phone on Wednesday. "He finished radiation treatment in December 2012, and he ran in Charleston at the end of January.

"That was our first push to start knocking some states off. We have five set up for that trip and then he decided he wanted to run New Orleans and I said, 'well, we have to go through Oklahoma and we haven't done Oklahoma,' so we did three more. Between January and the end of March, he'd run 10."

Susan is the master planner, the one who figures out the schedule and rides shotgun while Harvey drives. "My wife is the arranger and I'm the runner," Harvey said. "To be honest, I couldn't do it without her."

Harvey said running feels the same as it did before the cancer -- "I'm slower, but that could be because I'm older too," he said -- and he said his quest to run a marathon in every state has helped him combat the disease.

"I think it's helped a lot, psychologically," he said. "The doctors are super-impressed. They've turned into friends and are not just doctors anymore. They don't have other patients like me."

Harvey's first marathon was the 2006 Mayor's Marathon, which he finished in 4:45. His fastest, according to his profile on the Marathon Maniacs website, is 3:54 for the 2009 Mayor's. Only twice has he finished in six hours or slower (7:12 in Kentucky last April and 6:09 in Georgia last week). Usually he finishes between five and six hours, a pace that allows him to run so many so often.

Harvey likes the camaraderie he finds at races, especially at series like the Appalachian, where many of the same runners go from one race to another. And he likes seeing America.

Harvey, who has run 61 marathons in all, said he doesn't know what goal he'll chase now that he has finished his marathon quest, although he noted that he has met many runners who are trying to do a half-marathon in every state.

"I told my wife I was gonna go down (in distance) and run in only halfs," he said. "She said taking a cruise is way cheaper."

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