She finished a marathon in her wedding gown to honor her late husband

Kyle Melnick

With about three miles remaining in the London Marathon, Laura Coleman-Day jogged off the road and onto a median - but not because she was tired.

Her friends were waiting, holding the ivory wedding dress Coleman-Day had worn on the same day six years earlier, the day her husband Xander told her she looked beautiful in it.

She pulled the dress over her sweaty running clothes and jumped back on the course to finish the marathon in honor of Xander, who died in February 2024 of a complication from stem-cell transplants.

The dress stretched about a foot past Coleman-Day’s blue running shoes, so she held up the front and a friend held the train until they crossed the finish line Sunday.

Then Coleman-Day, 34, broke down in tears. Not only did wearing the dress make her feel connected to Xander, she said, but she had also finished her 12th marathon in 12 months as part of a fundraiser for a British stem-cell transplant charity.

“The challenge has brought me through the worst year of my life,” Coleman-Day said.

About a decade ago, Coleman-Day, living with her parents, met Xander, who served in the Royal Air Force, near a military base in Northumberland, England. The couple married April 27, 2019, in a Harry Potter-themed wedding in a stone barn in Chipping Norton, a town in Oxfordshire, England.

Coleman-Day said she could always find Xander in a crowd by listening for his loud and infectious laugh. He enjoyed birdwatching in his garden in Lincolnshire, and he was especially excited when he spotted his favorite birds, magpies and hoopoes.

But that excitement hardly matched Xander’s joy when he learned Coleman-Day was pregnant in February 2021, Coleman-Day said. They had their son, Amos, eight months later.

The next year, Xander was often sick and experiencing night sweats. Coleman-Day said she thought Xander had a cold until September 2022, when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer that occurs when the bone marrow produces too many immature white blood cells.

Xander beat the cancer three months later through chemotherapy, and he underwent a stem cell transplant in January 2023 to try to prevent the cancer from returning. He found a donor through Anthony Nolan, a British charity with a stem cell registry.

But Xander became sick again in June 2023. His liver and kidneys deteriorated, Coleman-Day said, and he was diagnosed with graft-versus-host disease, when transplanted donor cells attack the recipient’s tissues.

In the following months, Coleman-Day started planning a marathon project to raise money for Anthony Nolan. Coleman-Day said she wasn’t much of a runner, but the hobby helped clear her mind while Xander was sick.

Her plans were sidelined when Xander, 36, died in February 2024, Coleman-Day said.

Coleman-Day said she initially was in denial but soon felt anger that Xander had died before he could watch Amos grow up. She wanted something good to come from Xander’s death, so she restarted her marathon fundraiser “in the hope [Anthony Nolan’s] research into GvHD will help save future daddy’s and mummy’s,” she wrote.

She scheduled the first of her 12 marathons for May 2024, but she harbored doubts that she could run every race. Suddenly a single mother, Coleman-Day found family members to watch Amos when she went for training runs, or she ran miles on her treadmill after putting Amos to sleep.

In a green singlet and Brooks Glycerin GTS sneakers, Coleman-Day ran marathons through scorching heat, freezing temperatures, rain, strong winds and mud. She wanted to quit during each race, but after finishing, Coleman-Day said she felt a “high” that helped her through her grief.

She was shocked that strangers were donating to her fundraiser, which has now received more than $23 000 (R560 000).

Still, many days, Coleman-Day said she didn’t want to leave her bed. But she did, teaching Amos how to swim and ride a bike - and thinking about how Xander was missing those moments.

In December and January, Coleman-Day said she especially missed Xander while families got together for the holidays. She told herself she couldn’t train anymore.

“But then I looked at it, and I thought, ‘What I’m putting myself through is nothing compared to what Xander had to go through,’” Coleman-Day said.

Plus, Coleman-Day was determined run the London Marathon after learning it was the same day as what would have been her sixth wedding anniversary.

She pulled her wedding dress from a closet but didn’t try it on until the day before the race - worried it would no longer fit. She found it did, and she gave it to two friends, who planned to hand it to Coleman-Day at the 23rd mile marker near the Tower of London.

Coleman-Day ran the entire race in a veil - not the one from her wedding, because it was too long, she said. When Coleman-Day arrived at the meeting point, she hugged her friends and quickly pulled the dress over her clothes. Her friends pinned her No. 76063 bib on the front of her dress and inserted the same pink rose and thistle near her chest that Xander had attached to the same spot at their wedding.

Coleman-Day said she ran slowly the last three miles while she held the front of her dress, and her friend Kate Walford clutched the back to prevent Coleman-Day from tripping. Coleman-Day felt hot and uncomfortable running on a roughly 60-degree afternoon, she said, but emotionally she felt “incredible.”

She crossed the finish line near Buckingham Palace in under five hours and 53 minutes.

Coleman-Day was relieved to take a break from running marathons, she said, but she also felt bereft that the project was over. She said she will plan another race soon, maybe an ultramarathon.

In the past few days, she has considered what Xander would have thought of her fundraiser.

“He’d tell me I’m completely mad,” Coleman-Day said. “But he was always my biggest cheerleader. I know he would be proud of what I’ve achieved.”