When runners cross the finish line in Central Park this Sunday, one of them plans to do it without a shirt on. Lauren Spiezia, a breast cancer survivor who underwent chemotherapy, a mastectomy, and reconstruction last year, says she will run the TCS New York City Marathon topless, with her scars fully visible, to stop concealing what cancer left behind.
“I’m not the first woman to run a marathon topless, but I will be the first in New York City,” Spiezia said, according to Women's Health. She described the run as a way of refusing to hide anymore, telling the outlet, “I’m running topless because I no longer want to hide my scars.” She also framed the decision around a larger hope, saying, “I’m running like this in the hopes that my story might help save another woman’s life.”
A Diagnosis That Took Three Doctors to Catch
Spiezia was diagnosed with breast cancer at 32, a year before she trained for the marathon, per her account to Women's Health. She says she found a lump herself, but her OB-GYN initially told her she was too young for a mammogram, and a follow-up ultrasound came back benign. It was a breast surgeon, Spiezia says, who finally sent her for a mammogram, a biopsy, and an MRI.
That workup revealed cancer in both breasts, Spiezia says: stage 2 triple-negative cancer on one side and stage 1 ER/PR-positive cancer on the other. She also carries the BRCA2 mutation, according to her account. At the time, she had a one-year-old son and had recently left her job as an associate in wealth management at Merrill Lynch, in 2023, to raise him.
Building a Treatment Plan at Memorial Sloan Kettering
Spiezia says she and her husband, Elio, built her care team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, mapping out chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and multiple surgeries. She chose breast reconstruction with implants and has continued oral chemotherapy since, aimed at reducing her risk of recurrence, she told the magazine.
A fundraising page for Fred's Team, Memorial Sloan Kettering's charity partner, independently identifies Spiezia as a breast cancer survivor treated at the hospital. On that page, she writes, “I'm a breast cancer survivor, and MSK is where I was treated,” and confirms she is running the TCS New York City Marathon with Fred's Team on November 1.
From Half Marathon Goal to 26.2 Miles
During treatment, Spiezia says she set a goal of running her first half marathon just months after her mastectomy. The following year, after finishing treatment and surgeries, she set her sights on the full 26.2 miles. Her longest training run was an 18-mile effort in Central Park, the same park where she says she'll finish Sunday's race.
Spiezia also co-founded Laklak Beauty during her cancer journey, a brand she describes as offering science-based makeup that is colorful and fun. She created a Fred's Team subteam named Team Laklak after the brand, and she says it has raised $45,000 to date for the hospital she credits with saving her life, calling it “the very hospital that saved my life.” The company Nood donated styling tape Spiezia plans to use on race day for chafing prevention and makeshift support, according to her account.
Not the First, But a First for New York City
Spiezia isn't the only woman to have run a major marathon without a top. Louise Butcher, known in England as “The Topless Runner,” ran the 2024 London Marathon showing scars from her mastectomy and flat-closure reconstruction, Women's Health reports. Butcher first ran a marathon topless in April 2023, according to ITV, which reported she had been diagnosed with lobular breast cancer in April 2022, just three weeks after a mammogram had cleared her, and that she ran her first marathon only three days after finishing radiotherapy that September.
Breast cancer remains common enough that the American Cancer Society estimates roughly one in eight American women, or about 13%, will develop it in their lifetime. The organization projects about 321,910 new invasive breast cancer diagnoses and roughly 42,140 deaths among U.S. women in 2026, even as overall death rates have fallen 44% since 1989. The group also notes incidence has been climbing about 1% a year recently, with a slightly faster 1.4% annual rise among women under 50.
What the Rules Say About Race Day
New York Road Runners, which organizes the marathon, requires participants to comply with its competition rules, Code of Conduct, Run Clean Policy, and applicable city, state, and federal laws. Separately, New York state law allows individual cities, towns, or villages to adopt local ordinances restricting certain public exposure, though that provision alone does not establish whether any such local law applies to Sunday's race or how it might be enforced.
For now, Spiezia's plan stands as she described it to Women's Health: cross the start line, run the full distance through the five boroughs, and finish where she set her first big running goal after cancer treatment — back in Central Park, scars and all.
