8 minute read
Throwing Bones
By Nicholas Ebelhack
The Mountain-to-Sea Trail stretches 1,175 miles through the state of North Carolina, winding through mountains, farmland, swamps, forests and seashores over nearly 6,700 feet of elevation gain.
Only a handful of people have thruhiked the trail in its entirety; their names are posted on the MST’s digital hall of fame, most of them accompanied by humorous nicknames such as “Mountain Goat,” “Sketchy Guy,” and “Moxie.”
Most thru-hikers complete the trail in three to four months according to MST’s hiker resources. Listed under 2018’s reported completionists, Kenny “Bonehead” Capps, an alumnus of Lambda Chapter at Georgia, demolished the expectation for trans-state travelers, completing the trail in 55 days, running nearly 22 miles a day across North
Kenny Capps, Lambda (Georgia) trekked the entire length of the Mountains-to-Sea trail, covering 22 miles of terrain a day through North Carolina's varied landscapes.
Carolina’s trails. “It was pretty off the cuff, I’ve run the Mountains to Sea trail a lot because it goes through where I live, and I was used to longer runs and ultras,” Capps said. “I said ‘I think I can do it, I think I can do the whole thing.’ When I told my wife she asked me how long it would take, so I did the math and I saw I could do it in less than two months.”
Running nearly a marathon every day for two months straight is nothing short of an epic feat of athleticism and endurance itself, but as the “Chief Ground Pounder” of Throwing Bones – Capps’ philanthropic organization dedicated to providing encouragement and support to blood cancer patients such as himself – it was a testament to the human spirit in the face of tragedy.
In 2015, Capps was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer that affects plasma cells within the bone marrow and causes skeletal damage over time. When Capps received his diagnosis, he was found to be anemic, had two compression fractures in his spine and multiple lesions in his hip, clavicle, shoulder blades and ribs.
Immediately, Capps started a chemotherapy regimen and began his battle against a disease that has no cure. He said his doctors pushed him around, beat him up and made him stronger. After a bone marrow transplant and a lot of tough times, Capps is still here.
Until a cure is found, he has committed to inspiring and encouraging other patients through physical activity.
Five months out from his run across North Carolina, Capps posted a video to his journal announcing his endeavor to inspire other cancer patients. Looking at him, listening to how he speaks and how he conducts himself, it’s hard to imagine he’s simultaneously facing an incurable disease. “Cancer is scary. Blood cancers are even scarier,” Capps said. “You can’t cut it out and you can’t melt it away. But there is hope and there is life.
For Capps, life meant not giving up on his passions. As an endurance runner and a cyclist on the 1993 Journey of Hope team, Capps isn't a stranger to fitness. Less than a year after receiving his multiple myeloma diagnosis, he was already running again.
“I had to find a way to get my mojo back, so I started to walk again, and about four or five months in I had built back up the strength to run a mile,” Capps said. “By the end of January 2016, I ran a 10k race in Asheville, NC and I just kept going from there.”
The rest of 2016 took Capps through 16 races, which included a pair of half marathons. His toughest race, the Shut-In Ridge Run, took him through 18 mi of the MST he would later traverse again, tackling 6,000 feet of elevation gain. “It was horrible, I was terrible at it but I finished it!” Capps laughed. “I hit all the cutoff times and I did it.”
By the end of a year of reclaiming his life through running, Capps had already given his wife, Murphy, control over his company, Kudzu Printing Company, to educate and inspire others to find the strength to fight against cancer as he did.
“I wanted to do something positive, to apply what I learned from this experience going forward,” Capps said. “I wanted to do something epic.”
Throwing Bones, named as an homage to the bones cancer had tried to take from him, began as Capps' answer to his perseverance, and would become his rallying call for blood cancer patients like himself to strive for life.
Capps, looking for the greatest challenge, ran the length of the MST backwards, starting at North Carolina's Outer Banks and ending in the Great Smokey Mountains
On April 1, 2018, Capps mustered the courage and strength to begin the trek from Jockey’s Ridge State Park of North Carolina’s outer banks to Clingman’s Dome, the highest point of both the Great Smoky Mountains and the entirety of the Appalachian Trail.
Each day, Capps tracked and shared his progress in his digital journal. In addition to the miles, he tracked the landscapes, the wildlife, the hindrances and the emotions in potentially one of the most detailed accounts of the MST.
In his entries, while recalling each trail segment’s picturesque views and unexpected encounters with the communities he passed through, he demonstrated how to challenge cancer through continuing an engaging and active lifestyle.
The average age at which someone is diagnosed with multiple myeloma is 64. By that age, other health complications, including diabetes, hypertension and high blood pressure, can compound a feeling of hopelessness, something that Capps said can feel like a death sentence.
“When you feel like you’re at an end-stage of life it’s even more difficult to approach and do something that would be highly uncomfortable.”
That’s not to say that Capps felt comfortable the entire time he progressed through the MST. Early on, he said he was so excited to be running the trail he’d push himself too far. By the end of the first week, he had forced himself to take his only rest day of the entire trip after succumbing to shin splints.
He hated missing that time on the trail. His wife described his inability to stop moving forward, claiming that he would run between 30 and 40 miles a week leading up his MST trek while still taking his chemotherapy medication in the morning. It would exhaust him, but his dedication wouldn’t show it.
“He’s been given an opportunity to touch other people’s lives and to show them that just because you’ve been dealt a bad hand or just because something has been challenging in your life, it doesn't mean that you give up,” Murphy Capps said.
Even when stuck in a thunderstorm, chased by dogs or confronted with disgruntled drivers, Capps' impact was not lost on his followers and the friends that he met along the way. Even as he was attempting to open the eyes of his readers, his own were widened as he interacted with different communities across the state.
“I experienced it mostly in the eastern part of the state, but people are different in different locations and that wasn’t something I’d thought of before starting the run,” Capps said. “Some people who lived along the Mountains-to-Sea Trail didn’t even know it was there, and they certainly didn’t know why I was running!”
But for those who did know why he was running, he said the inspirational impact of Throwing Bones had been reciprocal. As he met other multiple myeloma patients, Capps said that it's been a privilege to meet and interact with them as they prepare for treatment and the next stage of their life.
“Some of the people that I have met and gotten to know are already gone, and they didn’t make it for various reasons,” Capps said. “But they’ve touched me just as much as I’ve gotten to touch others. They’ve shown me what it means to be brave and they’ve taught me that being scared is okay too. I’ve learned so much talking to the people that I’ve met because of this.”
It has been over a year since Capps completed the MST in 55 days on May 24, 2018, but Throwing Bones is looking to stay adaptable by continuing to encourage and inspire blood cancer patients through innovative outreach.
Looking to the future, Capps wants to create videos for blood cancer patients to self-assess their physical abilities and embark on a more active lifestyle, and telemedicine efforts to connect patients with each other to form a support network through Throwing Bones.
Throwing Bones accepts donations and has been exploring fundraising options through dinners, hosting races and selling merchandise, but Capps said that in order to take it to the next level they need all hands on deck.
“I’m learning quickly that it takes every bit of that, it takes every bit of people's involvement and donations, and it takes constant vigilance to keep it going.”
That vigilance is waning though, as Capps is already looking forward to his next epic adventure, understanding that time inevitably works against him. However, his ambition to say “what’s next” provokes his positive outlook.
“I don’t think that I’m going to be able to do epic things forever, but there are people who have been through more and that are certainly older than me who have done more,” Capps said. “I think I want to try to do this as long as I can.”
More than 26 years after cycling the country on Journey of Hope, Capps mentioned that a transcontinental run isn’t out of the picture, but he’s also open to hearing from his Pi Kappa Phi brothers if they have a spot for him on their upcoming endeavors.
Capps, understanding his abilities, looks to the future for his next epic adventure.
“If anybody wants to reach out, join up, or has a suggestion for another epic run, I’m down. Or if they want me to join them on their adventure, I’m down,” Capps said. “It doesn’t have to be about me.”
Capps said his undergraduate experience as a Pi Kappa Phi member built the intangible foundation for what would become Throwing Bones, saying it comes naturally for those who truly believe and commit to the fraternity's values.
“As Pi Kapps, we have all been brought through an organization that puts an enormous amount of importance on community and giving back,” Capps said. “We see the benefit of benefiting and helping others, and we’ve been doing that for a long time now.”
Not unlike his fraternal ventures, Throwing Bones demonstrates the value of shared experiences. Capps’ personal values show that Throwing Bones isn’t about him, it’s about coming together in support of one another, and embracing being afraid through the community they’ve forged to respond with life.
