In January of 2027, Elyssa and I are running the Dopey Challenge: four races, four mornings, 48.6 miles, all to raise money for the American Brain Tumor Association. There’s a reason this one is personal (a story that starts on the side of I-95 on the way to a Disney race), and I’ll get into all of it below. But if you’d rather skip straight to the good part, our team fundraising page is right here, and every dollar goes toward the research that keeps people like Elyssa running.

If you’ve known Elyssa and me for any length of time, you’ve probably worked out that we are Disney people. (I guess this site gives it away?) Yes, we are the kind who plan vacations around park hours, who treat a 6 a.m. wake-up call as a luxurious lie-in, and who own more pairs of running shoes than is strictly defensible. (I will not be defending it.) What you may not have heard is the part of our origin story that takes place in a hospital instead of a castle, and it begins, appropriately enough, on the way to a race.

Back in February of 2014, the two of us pointed the car south toward Orlando to run a Princess weekend race. We didn’t get there. Somewhere in South Carolina, before we’d even crossed into Georgia, Elyssa had a seizure in the passenger seat. The hours that followed were the kind you don’t forget: scans, specialists, a very long and very quiet drive home, and the news that there was a tumor in her brain that needed to come out. The surgeons removed it later that month. Roughly eight weeks after that, Elyssa went ahead and married me right on schedule. You can read the post I wrote at the time here: https://ropedrop.net/months-that-lasted-years/

The surgery left her with a left side that simply was not taking orders for a while. So she relearned it all, in order: first walking, then a slow shuffle, then a real jog, every inch of it powered by physical therapy and an absolute refusal to accept “maybe someday” as an answer. The goal she fixed on was getting back to a runDisney starting corral. She did it. We ran together again in 2015, and we’ve made a point of lacing up for at least one Disney race weekend every single year since. Running stopped being a hobby for us somewhere along the way and quietly became an annual confirmation that that we’re still here and still moving.

The story did not tie itself up with a bow in 2014, because brains are complicated and so is cancer. In 2022 the tumor made a reappearance. It meant a round of chemo and radiation, which did its job. These days Elyssa is in a monitoring phase where people continue to keep an eye on it.

That brings us to what Elyssa has decided she wants to do for her 40th birthday in 2027. In January of 2027, Elyssa and I are running the Dopey Challenge. For the blessedly uninitiated, that is four races on four consecutive mornings (a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon, and a full marathon) for a grand total of 48.6 miles and six finisher medals. It also means 4 days in a row waking up at 2:30 to catch buses to the early morning start line.

We’re running for the American Brain Tumor Association because research is the quiet engine behind every good outcome in a story like ours, and research doesn’t happen without support. This our team fundraising page: https://give.abta.org/team/824098. Whatever you can give goes toward the science that keeps people like Elyssa moving forward. Thank you, truly. See y’all in the corrals!

Also, f you want the longer version of how we got here, you can read. Elyssa’s telling on her website:

Thank you again.

Team Kivii: https://give.abta.org/team/824098