This Saturday, February 4th, is World Cancer Day.  It doesn’t sound really like a happy day to celebrate but for Ottawa resident Sindy Hooper, she views that day and each day as a gift.

And now Hooper is trying to give back to her community and to cancer research here in Ottawa while she has the strength.

If there's one word to describe Sindy, it is strong:  strong in mind, strong in spirit and especially strong in body. She's competed in several Iron Man competitions, the second time while undergoing chemotherapy for one of the toughest cancers to treat. 

And now she is setting her sights on a new goal: helping ground-breaking research here in Ottawa.

A certain calmness overcomes Sindy Hooper as she laces up and sets out for a run.

“Oh running just makes me feel fantastic,” she says, as she runs along a snowy road at the Experimental Farm, “I think about life, think about how wonderful everything is.”

The marathoner and mother of two has an incredible zest for life despite one of the worst diagnoses in life.

While training for Iron Man Canada in 2013, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  It stopped her in her tracks, temporarily.

“For someone like myself, I only have a ten percent chance of living to 5 years,” Hooper says matter-of-factly, “for me that's next year.  But those are just statistics and everybody's different and I’m hoping I will be one of those lucky few that makes it through.”

Part of Hooper's optimism comes from Dr. John Bell, a senior scientist with the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute who is helping to lead some exciting research that uses viruses to attack cancer and stimulate your immune system.

“So, what we're doing is making the patient's immune system understand the cancer is foreign,” explains Dr. Bell, who has dedicated the good part of his medical career to this research, “then attack it, so the patient cures himself when the therapy all comes together.”

Trials got underway in the summer of 2015.  The research is time-consuming and costly and that's where Sindy comes in. 

“We're trying to get a thousand people on the team,” she explains in a brief meeting with Dr. Bell at the Ottawa Hospital.

Hooper has “teamed” up with Dr. Bell to lead a group of runners in Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend May 27 and 28, with the goal of raising $100-thousand dollars. 

“There's a lot of passion around the world to find a solution to cancer,” says Dr. Bell, “and Sindy embodies that passion.  She's incredible and the fact she's fighting the fight is what's going to make a difference.”

Sindy knows it may not make a difference for her but she's dreaming big, counting on a thousand runners joining her team, the “Marathoners Gone Viral” that last weekend in May.  And, hoping, too, to fulfill one more dream, to compete in the ultimate Iron Man World Championship in Hawaii.

“It would be miracle actually if it were to happen,” she says, “so I'm going to do whatever I can over next 9 months to make that happen.”

You can follow Sindy Hooper’s progress on her blog at  http://lifetri.blogspot.ca/ and people can also register to be part of Sindy’s team Run for a Reason at www.runforareason.ca