It’s fair to say Elise Cassidy has had a rough 12 months - a stage 3 cancer diagnosis, 2 rounds of chemotherapy, and major surgery to remove a tumour from her bowel. Throw in a pregnancy and the birth to her 3rd child during all of this and you’ve the year from hell.

However the 36-year-old mum of three isn’t letting life get her down as she sets her sights on the 2025 Kathmandu Coast to Coast, competing in the 2 day individual category.

“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,” Cassidy said.

The whole saga started in June 2023 when she starting having abnormal bowel symptoms. A month later she discovered she was pregnant with her 3rd child. Over the next several months she “battled” the health system to have her symptoms investigated and in December she was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer after doctors discovered a 5cm tumour in her bowel.

“I had to fight the system to get seen cause I was pregnant and they didn’t want to look into it,” said Cassidy.

“I had to say, look I’ve got two other kids and I’d quite like for them to have a mum. When they caught it it was stage 3 and it was in all my lymph nodes as well.”

She immediately started three months of chemotherapy. Threes weeks after the treatment finished she gave birth to her daughter. The next four months involved more chemotherapy and bowel surgery to cut out the remaining cancer.

Cassidy, who completed the Longest Day in 2021, said she signed up for the 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.”

Cassidy has leant on the experience of adventure racing legend Nathan Fa’avae ONZM who has 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,” said Fa’avae.

“I’ve also been inspired by her incredible resilience and unwavering positivity, especially as a mother of young children.”

Cassidy said 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 get quite fatigued really easily and I still have no feeling in my feet from the chemo cause it kills a lot of nerve endings.”

She said she wanted 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 but you can still go out and achieve the stuff you want. You don’t have to let it eat you up and do nothing.”