She Lost Her Father to a Rare Cancer. On Sunday, Alexandra Bhola Runs New York in His Name.

Alexandra Bhola will line up in Staten Island on Sunday, November 1, for the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon.

She is not running for a time. She is running for her father.

Her father passed away in 2023 from Neuroendocrine Carcinoma, a rare and aggressive cancer that most families only hear the name of after the diagnosis.

Bhola is running her 26.2 miles to honour him and to raise money for research into the kind of cancer that took him.

Why She Runs

Grief has a way of changing what a race means.

For some runners the marathon is a time trial.

For others it becomes a vigil.

Bhola is in the second group. Every long run through the summer and autumn was a conversation with the person she lost.

Every mile of Sunday will be another one.

The Cancer That Took Her Father

Neuroendocrine Carcinoma is a rare, high-grade cancer that develops in specialised hormone-producing cells scattered throughout the body.

It can start in the lungs, the digestive tract, or less common sites, and it is often diagnosed late because the early symptoms are easy to mistake for something benign.

The peer-reviewed clinical overview of neuroendocrine carcinomas describes a disease that behaves very differently from the much better-known neuroendocrine tumours.

The high-grade carcinoma form is faster, more aggressive, and historically under-researched because so few patients are diagnosed with it in any given year.

That under-research is why Bhola is running.

The Charity She Is Running For

Bhola is raising funds for Brave Like Gabe, a foundation created by late American middle-distance runner Gabe Grunewald.

Grunewald was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, another rare cancer, and ran professionally through multiple rounds of treatment before passing away in 2019.

Her foundation now funds rare-cancer research at major cancer centres and supports athletes going through treatment.

The Brave Like Gabe NYC Marathon team is one of the foundation's largest annual fundraising vehicles.

The Shape of a Charity Marathon

Running for a charity team is different from running for yourself.

The training is the same.

The pressure is not.

Every mile on Sunday is tied to a sum of money.

Every finish line photo becomes a share for the cause.

The physical pain is folded into something bigger, and the mental weight of that is unlike any other kind of racing.

What Her Run Represents

There are more than 50,000 runners in the TCS New York City Marathon on Sunday.

Thousands are running for someone they lost.

A runner in England did seven marathons in seven days to fund brain-cancer research. A man in Tynemouth is running 128 marathons in 128 days in memory of his brother.

These are not isolated stories. They are the pattern.

Grief writes a lot of training plans. The surprising part is how often it finishes them.

Honour as Fuel

There is a running term that fits here. Honour pace.

Honour pace is the effort you can hold when you remember who you are running for.

It is almost never the fastest pace. It is always the most durable one.

The runners who finish strong at charity marathons are not the ones with the best taper. They are the ones with the clearest reason.

Bhola has a very clear reason.

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Training Through Grief

The hardest part of marathon training is not usually the mileage. It is the solitude.

Long runs are three or four hours of your own thoughts. For a runner carrying grief, that time becomes something closer to therapy than exercise.

Every runner who has trained for a marathon in memory of someone describes a version of the same experience. The miles stop being a chore.

They become a space to think about the person, to miss them, and to keep moving at the same time.

That is the strange gift of training for a charity race. The run and the grief share the same hours.

What Sunday Looks Like for Alexandra Bhola

She will catch the ferry before dawn. She will stand in the Staten Island start village in the cold with tens of thousands of other runners.

She will cross the Verrazzano into Brooklyn. She will pass the Pulaski into Queens.

She will come down First Avenue into Manhattan.

At some point the pace will stop mattering. Only one thing will.

The finish line. The names she carries.

The research she is helping fund.

Every runner at New York has a reason. Bhola's is louder than most.

On Sunday, 26.2 miles of New York City will carry it.

How to Support Her Run

Donations to the Brave Like Gabe NYC Marathon team support rare-cancer research funded through major cancer centres. If her story resonates, the foundation's website is the place to give.

A marathon is 26.2 miles. A reason to run them can be a lifetime long.