Bloomsday Perennial Jack Tenold, who has been fighting Stage 4 lung cancer since 2024, finished his most recent Bloomsday with his family by his side and an oxygen concentrator on his back. He already knows he won’t be able to do the 50th Bloomsday in May.

“I’m not going to do it,” he said. “I can’t walk that far.”

Tenold had been taking chemotherapy pills, but they stopped working. His doctors just recently switched him to a chemotherapy infusion. He struggles to stand and walk and is on oxygen constantly.

Tenold, 79, said he only wants to remain a Bloomsday Perennial – those who have run each year since the annual event started – if he can complete the race under his own leg power.

“I’m not going to take a wheelchair,” he said. “I’m adamant.”

While he’s disappointed not to be able t

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