It wasn’t hard to pick Chris Smiley out of the crowd at the start of the Colfax Marathon’s half marathon Sunday. He was the 6-foot-6 guy near the front of the pack dressed in a neon green shirt, listening to Ice Cube in his ear plugs, hip-hopping to keep his legs loose.
What might not have been so obvious to the crowd of runners around him was the scar on his neck. Last year he ran the Colfax half with a tracheostomy tube in his throat and a feeding tube in his stomach.
He hadn’t let throat cancer beat him, and it wasn’t going to interrupt his streak of running one of the Colfax events every year since its inception in 2006. He would finish that half marathon a year ago in 2 hours, 10 minutes, 57 seconds. Sunday would mark his 10th Colfax run, and it meant a lot to him to keep his string going.
“I’m a little nervous about this one,” Smiley said moments before the gun went off.
One hour, 35 minutes and 8 seconds later, Smiley crossed the finish line. As usual, he was all smiles.
“His name is fitting,” said runner Jill Howard of Highlands Ranch, who had a benign tumor removed from her head in 2013. “He smiles with his being and with his countenance. He just radiates it.”
Smiley says he never cried about his diagnosis or thought he was going to die. He credits his attitude to “the man upstairs” and concern for those who care about him.
“My friends, my family and the running community have been so strong and supportive, there’s no way you can let them down,” said Smiley, who lives in Centennial. “I always feel like it can be worse. I think about a 5-year-old going through cancer. I’m 33. I feel like I should be doing this. I wasn’t trying to inspire, I was trying to get through it. I was trying to let my friends and family know I’m OK and I want to be treated normal.
“If everyone is going to be praying for me and sending good vibes my way, I want to give them something back.”
He got into running because it was a good place to meet women but soon got serious about racing. He ran the half marathon the first year of the Colfax event and the marathon the following year.
In September 2013, what he thought was just a lingering sore throat was diagnosed as throat cancer. He had never smoked, “not once.” He spent most of the next eight months at Swedish Medical Center.
“I would never wish chemo or radiation on anyone,” Smiley said. “You go through chemo, you spend the next week throwing up. Your mouth tastes like steel. My fingernails were dark brown. My palms were dark brown. I had open sores all over my body, no hair. It was the worst pain.”
He was in and out of the hospital until May 2014, but still he ran Colfax with that trach tube. Eight days later he ran his 12th straight Bolder Boulder.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” said Smiley, who has a 13-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. “Your friends and family, they don’t know what makes your brain go. I can’t sit around the house, just can’t do it.”
Recently he had surgery on one of his vocal cords. He speaks with a hushed, raspy voice that adds even more softness to the gentle touch he has for others.
Cancer didn’t soften him, though. That’s the way he was, the way he is.
“I’m glad I never had to do a turnaround with my life because of this,” Smiley said. “I’m glad I was always happy, had a lot of friends, appreciated my family, appreciated life. (Beating cancer) just made me happier.”
He may have to fight it again, though.
“It’s there,” he said. “It’s not active, it’s not growing, no tumors. But it’s there.”
Smiley listened to an eclectic playlist during Sunday’s race. There was rap, but also Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind.” That one is a “ritual,” because it helps him get through miles of a race when he’s really hurting.
“You get to Mile 11 and it comes on and you just laugh,” Smiley said, “because it’s the silliest song.”
Smiley’s smile at the start of Sunday’s race hinted at prerace performance anxiety. Afterward it was as free as, yes, a summer wind.
“The fact that I finished my 10th straight Colfax is just amazing,” Smiley said. “I was nervous about this one, more than any of the other races. I needed to complete this one.”
John Meyer: jmeyer@denverpost.com or
