Sydney Towle had just come through a difficult day of chemotherapy when an email arrived that changed her mood completely.

She had been accepted to run the 2026 New York City Marathon with the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation.

For someone living with stage 4 bile duct cancer, attempting 26.2 miles might have sounded impossible.

To Sydney, it sounded like a dream finally coming true.

“I’ve wanted to run a marathon for as long as I’ve been running — 10+ years,” she wrote after receiving the news.

Then she acknowledged the obvious.

“I know it might seem crazy to try to run a marathon with everything going on.”

But cancer had already taught Sydney to question what was supposed to be impossible.

She had been diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in 2023 at just 23 years old. Instead of allowing the diagnosis to erase the goals she had before cancer, she became more determined to pursue some of them.

Running was one of those goals.

Ironically, Sydney said she had begun making a more serious effort toward completing a marathon only after she became sick.

She had always been active.

Her brother, Austin Towle, later remembered her running cross-country in high school, jogging across Dartmouth College’s campus and finding ways to remain active even during treatment.

There were times, he wrote, when Sydney could undergo chemotherapy and then be outside running or surfing the next day.

For Sydney, running was not simply exercise.

It became tied to the philosophy she carried through cancer.

When she announced her marathon acceptance, she remembered a late friend who had also been a runner and cancer patient.

That friend had left her with a sentence Sydney carried forward:

“Nothing is impossible when you’re running with hope.”

Sydney added her own interpretation.

“Hope keeps us alive, it keeps us going, it makes the impossible seem possible.”

Those words would eventually become much more meaningful than Sydney could have known when she wrote them.

Her goal was not only to reach the finish line.

She wanted the marathon to help other people facing the same rare cancer.

Sydney joined Team CCF, the endurance fundraising program of the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation, and began raising money for research, advocacy and support for patients and caregivers.

By July 2026, she had personally raised more than $10,218 toward the foundation’s marathon campaign. The organization featured Sydney as one of its “Community Champions,” praising the way she had shared both the difficult and hopeful parts of living with cholangiocarcinoma.

The marathon was scheduled for Nov. 1.

Sydney never reached the starting line.

She died in early August 2026 at age 26 after a three-year battle with stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma.

Suddenly, the marathon that had represented possibility became an unfinished dream.

Then her brother made a decision.

Austin would run it for her.

Less than two weeks after Sydney’s death, he created a GoFundMe announcing that he would take her place with Team CCF at the New York City Marathon.

For Austin, the decision carried a painful irony.

Sydney had repeatedly tried to convince him to sign up while she was alive.

“I remember her asking me countless times this past year to sign up and do it with her,” he wrote.

Then came the sentence that captured everything the race now meant to him:

“I would give anything to run it with her now.”

That is what makes the story so difficult and so moving.

Sydney had imagined the two of them running together.

Austin had not registered then.

Now he would run the exact race she had hoped to complete — but without her beside him.

Not just any marathon.

The New York City Marathon Sydney had already earned a place in.

The race she had called a dream come true.

The race she planned to use to raise money for the organization fighting the cancer that ultimately took her life.

Austin said he could think of few better ways to honor his sister.

He started his fundraiser with a straightforward goal: $5,000, the amount needed for his marathon participation.

The response quickly became much larger.

As of the latest update, the campaign has raised more than $40,800 from over 1,200 donations — more than eight times Austin’s original target.

He explained that anything raised beyond the $5,000 participation requirement would go toward Sydney’s memorial scholarship fund and the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation.

So once again, a goal connected to Sydney became something bigger than expected.

She had already raised more than $10,000 herself while preparing for the marathon.

Now, after her death, thousands of people were helping her brother continue what she started.

The race is scheduled to wind through New York City’s five boroughs before finishing in Central Park.

For most runners, the finish line will represent months of training, exhaustion and achievement.

For Austin, every mile will carry something else.

A memory.

A conversation.

A request from his sister that he wishes he had accepted sooner.

There will be 26.2 miles between the starting line and the finish.

Sydney will not physically run any of them.

But her story will be present in all of them.

She had spent the final years of her life showing people that a cancer diagnosis did not have to erase joy.

She traveled.

She exercised.

She shared chemotherapy appointments openly.

She raised money.

She spoke about hope without pretending that what she was enduring was easy.

The Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation described her as someone who encouraged patients to ask questions, explore treatment options and seek second, third or even fourth opinions when necessary.

That advocacy is part of what Austin will now carry through New York.

The money raised in Sydney’s name may help fund research into the same disease she faced.

The scholarship will carry her name forward.

And the marathon will complete a promise that changed after her death but did not disappear.

There is something especially powerful about the fact that Sydney’s original dream involved movement.

Cancer often forces people to stop.

Stop working.

Stop traveling.

Stop making plans.

Stop imagining too far into the future.

Sydney kept moving.

Even during chemotherapy, she continued thinking about a marathon months away.

She believed she might make it.

She trained.

She raised money.

She gave herself permission to imagine crossing the finish line.

She never got that opportunity.

But Austin will.

And when he steps onto the course on Nov. 1, he will be doing something Sydney asked him to do long before either of them understood what the request would eventually mean.

She wanted her brother beside her.

Now he will run without her.

But he will still be running because of her.

Sydney once wrote that hope makes the impossible seem possible.

Her brother cannot accomplish the impossible thing he wants most.

He cannot bring her back.

He cannot go back and say yes when she asked him to register alongside her.

But he can lace up his shoes.

He can step onto the course she dreamed about.

He can run the miles she never got to run.

And he can make sure that, even though Sydney Towle never reached the New York City Marathon starting line, her reason for running still reaches the finish.