This article is republished with permission from Soundings, a weekly newspaper in Hampton Roads that covers all of the military. Soundings photo by Harry Gerwien

Michael Mann could not shake the feeling that something was not quite right. The 36-year-old Hampton, VA resident was slow recovering from his 2:40:39 time at the Marine Corps Marathon on October 31, 2004, where he placed 23rd overall and sixth in his age division.

Five months after the marathon, the Air Force master sergeant planned to race in the Jamestown High School Swamp Run on March 12, 2005, a 5K romp where he set the course record of 16:22 in 2002.

Mann, a non-commissioned officer in charge of administration and manpower at the U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Warfighting Center in Suffolk, had posted times of 15:50 and 15:51 -- just a minute off world record 5K pace--in two races prior to the Marine Corps Marathon, so he hoped to break his old record.

A new course record was set that day, but it was not by Mann. Mark Tompkins (29) of Newport News, VA shattered Mann's record with a 16 flat. Mann placed fourth overall, and first in his age group with a 17:02. A highly respectable time, but to Mann, that signified trouble.

"I knew then something was wrong," Mann said. "I had been running consistently 16:30 or better. It felt like I was running up the side of a mountain."

Most runners would have written it off as just having a bad day. If you listen to runners long enough, there is a litany of injuries they suffer through or that keeps them from training as much as they would like.

Mann, however, was a finely tuned athlete and he knew something was wrong. He went to his family practice doctor, who thought the same way as the avid runner.

"He understood my mentality--as scary as that sounds--because he's a cyclist," Mann explained. "He understood how I would be concerned when I couldn't shake the fatigue."

An X-ray revealed a suspicious spot in Mann's lung. At that point, the family practitioner suggested a specialist. A CAT scan confirmed a lung tumor.

Mann was stunned.

"I don't smoke or drink, I don't chase loose women or eat fast food," he said. "I run almost 100 miles a week. There's no way I could have cancer."

He tried to joke through the diagnosis. "My dogs shed a lot of fur. Maybe it's a fur ball," he told his doctors.

But he had been married to a woman who smoked. "They believe second-hand smoke was a contributing factor," Mann said.

Refusing to accept the likelihood he had cancer, Mann continued to train for the 2005 Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach. Although ill, he finished the race in 2:47:36, good enough for a 12th-place finish, but more than eleven-and-a-half minutes slower than his seventh-place finish in 2004.

With that race behind him, Mann turned his attention to what was growing inside him. A biopsy failed to get any lung tissue. The thoracic surgeon at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth had no choice but to do major surgery and remove the tumor.

But, first things first. Mann wanted to know how much time he would have to take off from running.

"The doctor said two weeks minimum. I told him I had a race on June 4 and one on July 4, so how about June 6," Mann said.

On June 4, Mann ran a blistering 16:11 at the Run for Children 5K in Williamsburg, good enough to place first in his age group and fourth overall.

Three days later, the entire bottom of his right lung lobe was removed. Tests revealed a non-small cell lung cancer, the type of cancer that strikes 87 percent of all lung cancer cases.

As if that was not enough, lymph nodes also appeared to be compromised by the cancer. It was suggested Mann undergo more treatment.

"If you have one of these lung cancers, even when it's small and been cut out, there's still a 30 percent chance it will come back," according to Dr. Michael Hopkins, Mann's hematologist and oncologist at the naval medical center.

Four treatments of chemotherapy would improve those odds to just 15 percent, Hopkins explained.

Twenty-two days after surgery that removed 23 to 25 percent of his lung capacity, Mann was running. "The first three days, I just ran three miles, but then that felt OK, so I did five or six every day after that," Mann said. "I wasn't really short of breath, but I did have a problem with the humidity."

He canceled running in the July 4th race. "Cooler heads finally prevailed," Mann admitted.

He began his chemotherapy series in July, four weeks apart. Mann set a goal to run at least 50 miles a week during treatment, less than half of what he normally would run.

"I would get a treatment on a Monday, and then wouldn't have another until three weeks later," Mann said. "I could run two days after the treatment, and then my knees and body would ache, so I'd ride a stationary bike."

He would give his body four days rest and then would run two weeks straight until the next treatment.

"The doctor never said I couldn't run," Mann explained. "Any day I could run, I was out, still doing a 10-miler on the weekends."

The chemotherapy sessions were grueling, with him sitting with a needle stuck in his arm for nearly six hours. Running was a relief from the stress.

Mann suffered through all of the treatment side effects of the chemotherapy, losing all of his hair, including his eyebrows and the five hairs on his chest, he joked.

"I didn't even have enough for a cool comb-over, so I shaved my head before my second treatment, and so did my best friend," Mann said. "I wanted to draw in my eyebrows based on my mood, sort of like Bert and Ernie."

The mild fatigue he was told he would feel was an understatement, Mann said. But the running kept him sane, even when he could not feel his feet due to numbness caused by the chemotherapy.

Right after Mann's second chemo treatment, Dana Reeves, the widow of actor Christopher Reeves, announced she had lung cancer on August 9, 2005. She was also a non-smoker. Her death March 6 was not lost on Mann. Although they shared the same type of cancer, within seven months of diagnosis, she was dead, while Mann was training for the 2006 Shamrock Marathon, six months after his final chemotherapy session.

To the cheers of family and friends, Mann finished 27th out of 1,738 runners with a time of 2:54:26 in a race with cold temperatures and strong headwinds for nearly ten miles. His pace was 19 minutes slower than his 2004 time of 2:35:08, which earned him seventh place overall. His personal best was a fourth place finish in the 2003 Shamrock with a time of 2:28:25.

"I was hoping to break 2:40 and did 2:54," he groused. "I'm not much on moral victories, but at least I broke three hours. Now I have a base from which to build."

Mann credits running with saving his life, a sport he hated when he started in junior high school, a sport he learned from his father, and now something his 14-year-old son Anthony is doing as well.

"I was so in tune with my body, I could tell something was wrong," Mann explained. "It was by the grace of God, because I would never have gone to the doctor until it affected my running."

That 30 second slower 5K race may have made the difference between life and death for Mann.

"This guy's complaint was so subtle, it was almost comical," Hopkins said. "But he was so in tune with his body, his cancer was caught very early, and that's where we have the most success."

Mann's attitude is also a factor in his recovery, Hopkins believes. "He wasn't going to let treatment of any flavor slow him down," Hopkins said. "I've never seen anyone like him."