Photo by Greg Bucher and Sara Jensen Marshall High School alum Kate Bucher runs in the Grandmas Marathon in Duluth, MN on June 18, 2022. Bucher completed the marathon in three hours and 11 minutes to qualify for the Boston Marathon on April 17, 2023.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon and Kate Bucher is walking her dog down the street before she has to go in to work. Bucher is now settled back home in Marshall and works two jobs. She finds time to do all this and runs 70-80 miles per week.

This is a journey that started long ago to promote good health and to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Bucher earned her spot in the marathon, but she’s doing it for a purpose bigger than herself.

Kate Bucher was born in Plymouth to Greg and Lisa Bucher. She is the middle child of three with an older sister, Sara, and a younger sister, Anna.

“She’s the middle child and she was always full of energy,” Sara Jensen said. “Always the jokester, never sat still. She was always super happy, goofy, and brought a lot of fun to our family for sure.”

Kate’s family moved from Plymouth to Marshall when she was two years old. She’s lived there ever since.

Lisa Bucher was in band and choir. Greg Bucher wrestled at Southwest Minnesota State University. It was almost destined for Bucher to be an athlete.

“As a kid, I was always on the go, very impatient and wanted everything done fast,” Kate Bucher said. “I didn’t want to wait around, and when I wanted something, I wanted it done now. That is totally still the person I am today and I do believe that is one of the reasons I love to run. I can go as fast as I want and don’t have to wait around for anybody. All the pressure is on me, how well I do is on me, training is on me and whether or not I achieve my goals is on me. I don’t have to rely on anybody else, which is something I absolutely love about this sport.”

Along with running as a hobby, Bucher played volleyball and ran track growing up. When it came to volleyball, she would do club ball, mini camps and play for Marshall High School.

When she turned 12, she joined the track team at the high school. Cross country piqued Bucher’s interest her sophomore year, but because cross country and volleyball happened in the same season, she didn’t want to give up volleyball. Then she had a talk with Marie Sample and Dan Westby about doing both in the same season.

“Sophomore summer, I started talking to my track coach, Marie Sample, about maybe doing both volleyball and cross country if it would be okay with the volleyball coach and the athletic director because it was not very typical for an athlete to be in two sports in the same season,” Bucher said. “Both the volleyball coach and the cross country coach said we could make it work. So junior and senior year, I did volleyball and cross country.”

“The fall season was long and tiring, but I wouldn’t trade that season of life and memories for anything in the world. There would be times where I would hop on the bus and go race at the cross country meet and then, right after the race, me and my parents would run to the car and drive to where ever the volleyball game would be.”

Bucher and the Marshall Tigers would go on to win the Big South Conference championship in both cross country and volleyball in her junior and senior years. Then she signed her letter of intent to run track and cross country at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

In June 2020, Bucher graduated from Marshall High School. The stars were aligning for Bucher to have a promising collegiate career as she did in high school, but no one could foresee the impact 2020 would have in Kate’s life.

In March 2020, the United States shut down sports because of the Covid-19 outbreak, which turned into a worldwide pandemic. The pandemic canceled Kate’s final track season at Marshall High School.

Kate started her freshman year at Mankato State. She was attending classes but had to go through rigorous protocols as an athlete just to be on campus. Masks were required at all times, students were subject to periodic COVID testing, and no visitation was allowed in on-campus dorms. Not an ideal college experience, especially for a first-year student.

Around the same time Bucher started college, Kate’s father Greg, was immediately rushed to the hospital. Lisa, Kate and Anna all sat in the hospital waiting room, awaiting news on Greg’s unknown status.

Sara, the eldest daughter, was on vacation with her now husband and vividly remembered the call she received about her dad.

“I was on spring break in Mexico with my husband and his family,” Sara said. “My mother called me, but I missed the call. My mother called me again and I took the phone call at the table, and she told me that my father was being rushed to the hospital. They found a tumor in his colon, giving him colon cancer. Immediately we left the restaurant and I couldn’t stop crying. I told my husband family’s and I knew that Mexico was the last place I wanted to be.”

After being diagnosed with Stage three colon cancer, Greg went into remission within six months of treatment.

Although the family received great news about his prognosis, Kate’s first year of college was an unpleasant one. She would meet her teammates and practice but realized the atmosphere was different at Mankato. It wasn’t the same family-oriented place that Marshall High School built throughout the years.

Bucher finished her freshman year at college but decided she would not return. Kate was no longer a runner on scholarship and no longer was a part of MSU Mankato.

“I think my decision to quit college track and cross country had a lot of people questioning me,” Kate Bucher said. “I was on scholarship and was pretty good at what I was doing and so a lot of people didn’t understand why I wasn’t doing it anymore. But I didn’t enjoy it like I thought I was going to, and just because I wasn’t running in college anymore didn’t mean I was going to completely stop running. It was kind of ruining my love for running and I didn’t want that. My mental health was affected and I called my parents crying telling them everything that was going on.”

Kate came back to Marshall with her family after sharing the news of her leaving school. She went to get her certification to be a personal trainer. Bucher also continued to train hard, running miles and miles every week being an advocate for fitness and finding her passion again for running.

In June 2022, Bucher entered Grandma’s Marathon for an opportunity to qualify for the Boston Marathon. She started training in November 2021 by doing speed workouts, running hills, and weight training. The race, held in Duluth, was attended by her sister Sara and her father Greg, who had just finished six months of treatment for colon cancer.

He was cancer free.

The goal for Bucher was to complete the marathon in less than three-and-a-half hours. Then her time would be recorded and go into a pool she would wait to see if her time qualified her for the Boston Marathon.

Kate finished at three hours and 11 minutes. She place 755th out of 8,735 runners and placed 157th out of 3,805 women who ran the race.

In September, Kate received a notification that her registration had been accepted and that she would be one of the runners in the Boston Marathon this next April. All the hard training miles and dieting had paid off from a goal she set for herself last year.

“I started working towards getting certified as a personal trainer and nutrition coach since I was a little kid,” Bucher said. “While I was doing this, I started running and lifting a lot. I found myself falling in love with long-distance running. I was doing 12-20 miles a day and it was my favorite part of my day. The process to run a qualifying time was not easy. There were days I didn’t want to go out and run or train. Some miles and weeks got long and it was tiring but totally worth it.”

The adversity in Kate’s life made her resilient enough to find a way back to her passion for running and exhibit all of the values that have been instilled in her by her family. Many admire the discipline exhibited by Bucher in being a trainer and nutrition coach while also wanting to pay it forward in a way by giving back to a community she loves.

“Kate is a very determined individual,” Sample, Kate’s track and cross country high school coach, said. “She has a love for running. Very joyful when she runs. She helped her team with two conference championships. I remember her determination and joy that she ran with each time she raced.”

Bucher wants to run in all six major marathon races (Boston, Chicago, Tokyo, New York, Berlin and London). She also wants to do an iron man race and an ultra marathon, which is comparable to the 100-mile superior race.

Kate also runs and bikes with her family as well. She’s an advocate for the American Cancer Society, so she helped start a GoFundMe account to raise money for the organization, inspired by her father and the strength he showed through his battle with cancer.

Bucher wants others that are diagnosed to be able to have that same fight because it is not just about her journey to qualifying for the marathon, it’s about doing for a purpose that is bigger than herself.

To support Kate’s cause, you can donate to her GoFundMe at the link below and cheer her on as she runs in the Boston Marathon on April 17.

https://tinyurl.com/ycybaz2c