Heartbreak Hill? These marathoners have seen worse.

For two years, grief left her body feeling like a pressure-cooker.

“It wasn’t until my junior year that I discovered something that really helped with the release of my emotions,” said Brooke Stanford ’25, who lost her mother, Andrea, to pancreatic cancer two weeks before arriving on campus as a first-year in 2021.

“The one thing that really helped was running.”

Now Stanford is using the sport to honor her mother and lift other families facing the disease. She’s been training for this year’s Boston Marathon while soliciting donations for Project Purple, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting pancreatic cancer and supporting patients. Every year, the Boston Athletic Association partners with a set of charities, which in turn recruit marathoners to raise money ahead of race day.

Stanford won’t be the only College runner hitting the 26.2-mile course for a loved one on April 21. Each of these students is vying for a strong finish — and a fundraising haul for a cause close to the heart.

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Stanford discovered Project Purple last summer while browsing a list of approved charities for the marathon.

“I knew I would want to run for some sort of cancer research organization, but I didn’t think that there would be one so fitting to what I had been through,” she said. “After that, I made it my No. 1 mission to get a spot on the Project Purple team.”

The trouble was, the odds were on par with getting into Harvard.

“I had just under 150 applications for five spots,” said Project Purple program director Vin Kampf.

Stanford, a Dunster House resident and applied math concentrator, soon found herself swept into phone calls and interviews with Kampf and the nonprofit’s other top brass.

“You would think I was applying for a job at an investment bank,” she said. “A lot of people think the hardest part about running for a charity is raising the money. But the hardest part is 100 percent getting a spot on the team.”

The final step was a formal presentation of her fundraising plans to Project Purple last fall. “I spent a full week putting together this very detailed PowerPoint and Excel,” recalled Stanford, who vowed to raise $50,000 by soliciting individual donations and hosting special events. “I spent way longer doing that than on any assignment Harvard has ever given me.”

A week later, she received the good news in a tearful call with Kampf. “I was just so excited that I got to do this — and do it for my mom,” she said.

The first-time marathoner, who dons purple leggings for every training run, has continued giving it her all. She surpassed her $50,000 pledge nearly two months ago and currently ranks in the Top 10 of Boston Marathon fundraisers this year. According to Kampf, she also ranks among Project Purple’s most successful charity runners ever.

“In some ways, I feel like I found my life’s purpose,” Stanford said. “I want to work more with Project Purple. I want to do more to make a difference. I want to help end pancreatic cancer.”

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At first, Grace Taylor ’25 didn’t tell her friends about her cancer diagnosis. She was too busy working as a peer adviser for incoming first-years.

“I wanted to be the best peer adviser I could be,” said Taylor, a rising sophomore at the time. “I knew that if I let my own stuff in, I wouldn’t be able to serve the entryway very well.”

When she texted her pal Andrew Athanasian ’25 a few days later, he too was a bit occupied.

“I was walking across the river to go work out when Grace texted, ‘Hey, can we talk?’” Athanasian recalled. “I was like, ‘Is it important?’ And she replied, ‘No, not really.’”

“I didn’t want to distract the workout!” cracked Taylor, a Crimson lacrosse player.

Taylor broke the news later that day. Athanasian immediately stepped up, becoming a pillar during his friend’s treatment for an aggressive form of thyroid cancer. Not least, he and Taylor’s Quincy House roommate, Amy Wotovich, made countless runs to BerryLine for (among other things) throat-soothing ice cream. With the help of them and her parents, Taylor said, she persevered without dropping out for the semester.

Athanasian, an econ concentrator who lives in Lowell House, joined Taylor and her family last fall at the Mass General Brigham Eversource Cancer 5k, a benefit for the oncology practice that saw Taylor through two surgeries and radioactive iodine treatment.

“Seeing how Grace and her family responded to that 5k,” Athanasian recalled, “I found myself saying: ‘Just imagine if this was the Boston Marathon.’”

After nabbing a spot on the Mass General Marathon Team, the first-time marathoner has made that vision a reality. Athanasian aims to raise $10,000 for the hospital’s pediatric oncology unit, with part of the proceeds earmarked for the adolescents and young adults cancer program that saw Taylor through treatment into remission.

“I’m running for Grace but I’m also running for everyone who didn’t make it,” emphasized Athanasian, remembering a friend from his Long Island hometown killed by brain cancer at age 17. Athanasian, a committed Catholic, has inscribed his Asics with references to scripture as a reminder of his inspiration. (Hebrews 12:1, on his right, feels tailor-made for the modern charity runner.)

On race day, Taylor hopes to glimpse her friend from the celebration hosted by Mass General, a long-standing fixture at Mile 20 — just before the course crests Heartbreak Hill.

“That’s the darkest part of the course,” Athanasian said. “But they’re bringing out all the pediatric oncology patients to cheer us on. How can you not become Usain Bolt after seeing those kids?”

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Every Sunday, Cohasset, Mass., native Bridget Kondrat ’26 would attend Mass with her large extended family. Then everyone would head over to her grandparents’ place and spend the day together.

“We have always been so close,” said Kondrat, who counts three siblings and 18 cousins. “And my Nana was really the heart of that.”

For 14 years, Kondrat’s maternal grandmother, Cleida Buckley, fought multiple myeloma with the help of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Through it all, the 5-foot-2 powerhouse maintained her status as the family’s hostess and connector.

“She just kept showing up for us,” Kondrat said.

Watching the marathon became another family tradition after Kondrat’s mom, Liz, ran in 2000, and Buckley proved a memorable presence from her perch on Heartbreak Hill.

“She was so freaking cute, just sitting there in Newton Centre with her little beach chair,” Liz said.

That’s why training for the 2025 event with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team struck Kondrat as the perfect way to honor her grandmother, who died in 2022.

“Running with Dana-Farber gives me the opportunity to call upon her strength,” said Kondrat, who hopes to raise $10,000.

The Harvard-Radcliffe rower and Eliot House resident has ambitious goals for her second marathon. Charity runners can run Boston without meeting the race’s strict qualifying times. But the economics concentrator hopes to best the event’s official 3 hour and 25-minute cutoff (with an average pace of 7:49 per mile) for women ages 34 and younger.

Kondrat, who started running with her mom in fourth grade, has been following an ambitious training program complete with speed workouts, intervals, and long runs at her target marathon pace.

“I biked next to her last week when she ran 12 miles,” Liz said. “She was doing 7:30s the whole time!”

Keeping up the regimen has been a challenge for a full-time student-athlete and part-time fundraiser, Kondrat said. But it’s nothing compared with the marathon battle Buckley endured.

“Whenever I start to complain or lose motivation,” Kondrat said, “I just think about everything I watched my Nana go through.”

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In seventh grade, Maggie Chiappetta-Uberti ’26 came home feeling discouraged after her first track practice. She was exhausted. She was sore. All she wanted to do was quit.

“My mom Lainee sat me down and right away started instilling me with confidence,” Chiappetta-Uberti recalled. “She started telling me about the records she set in middle school and high school. She started showing me her medals.”

That inspired Chiapetta-Uberti to stick with it. “I’m so grateful to her for pushing me to continue,” said the Kirkland House resident, who competed in cross-country and track through high school.

Her mom, Lainee Uberti, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at 58. “She immediately started walking four miles every day,” recalled Chiappetta-Uberti, who was in ninth grade at the time.

More than six years later, Uberti is still religious about her daily jaunt. “Getting out there and running or walking,” she said in an interview, “that’s what keeps us going.”

Once again, that strength has inspired her daughter to tackle a big challenge. Chiappetta-Uberti is training for her first marathon while raising funds for the Alzheimer’s Association. Each member of Team End ALZ is supposed to bring in a minimum of $10,000. But the neuroscience concentrator set the loftier goal of $26,200 — or $1,000 per mile.

As part of her efforts, she’s also populating a TikTok feed with training videos, Alzheimer’s awareness, and tributes to Uberti.

“It’s so special that Maggie is going the extra mile — no pun intended — to raise awareness, raise money, and put her heart into representing our family,” said Chiappetta-Uberti’s other mom, Laura Chiappetta. Both parents will travel from their home in Los Angeles to cheer their daughter’s 26.2-mile debut.

The punishing race feels like an appropriate gesture when her mom is dealing with an incurable disease like Alzheimer’s, Chiappetta-Uberti said. “I want her to know there’s support for her — she’s not facing this alone.”