
Not just coasting along
After a rough 12 months battling bowel cancer, new mum Elise Cassidy is taking on the iconic Kathmandu Coast to Coast multisport event on Saturday 8 February, 2025.
A stage three cancer diagnosis, two rounds of chemotherapy, major surgery to remove a bowel tumour, and the birth of her third child, are not holding her back. The 36-year-old has set her sights firmly on completing the two-day individual category on 8-9 February. “You have something like this happen and you can either let it cut you down and wallow in it or can go out and live life better than you did before,” says Elise.
Her saga started in June 2023 when she began having abnormal bowel symptoms. A month later she discovered she was pregnant. During the following months Elise “battled” the health system to have her symptoms investigated, and in December she was diagnosed with stage three cancer after doctors discovered a 5cm tumour in her bowel. “I had to fight the system to get seen because I was pregnant and they didn’t want to look into it. I had to say, look I have two other kids and I’d quite like for them to have a mum. When they caught it, the cancer was stage three, and had spread to my lymph nodes as well.”
Elise immediately started three months of chemotherapy. Three weeks after the treatment finished she gave birth to her daughter, then had further chemotherapy and bowel surgery to cut out the remaining cancer.
She signed up for the Coast to Coast 2025 event to give herself something to work towards. “When I was in hospital having my surgery, the entries came out for Coast to Coast and I thought ‘I don’t want to be sitting in a hospital bed, I want to do this’. It’s a good way to get fit, strong and healthy again.”
Adventure racing legend Nathan Fa’avae helped her with a customised training plan. “I’ve always admired people with ambition and determination, so when she asked for help, there was no hesitation. We got straight to work,” explains Nathan, adding he has been inspired by Elise’s incredible resilience and unwavering positivity, especially as a mother to young children.
Elise says training has been challenging as she dealt with the effects of her treatment. “I couldn’t really paddle because the chemo makes touching cold stuff really painful. “I also get fatigued really easily and I still have no feeling in my feet from the chemo because it kills a lot of nerve endings.”
She adds that one goal is to show people going through a similar experience that it didn’t need to define them. “I wanted to do Coast to Coast to prove a point, that you can go through shit and have all this hard stuff happen, yet you can still go out and achieve the stuff you want. You don’t have to let it eat you up and do nothing.”