FLEMING ISLAND - For some, a Bucket List is a wish list of places to visit in retirement, college football games to watch or building a special house to complete a lifetime of work.

For Britta Fortson, 53, of Fleming Island, a simple email from Tokyo became the beginning of completing her bucket list.
"I was speechless when the email came through that said I was selected to run the Tokyo Marathon in March 2026," said Fortson, an area top master runner and endurance athlete and long-time part of the 1st Place Sports elite racing team out of Jacksonville. "It's been a long time coming, and I've survived a lot of life to make it happen."
Fortson's surviving of 'a lot of life' is her journey from a diagnosis of cancer as a teenager, chemotherapy, remission from the cancer for nearly 23 years, then the horror of the same cancer returning in a different spot of her body.
"As a high schooler, I literally could not see, and I was diagnosed with Ocular Melanoma, a rare eye cancer that literally took one of my eyes," said Fortson. "I started running at 15, was diagnosed at 17, mole found on optic nerve (1992), started radiation at 19 (I was radioactive for a week) with a two-mile run (with an eyepatch), the furthest I could run, beat the cancer by 22 and ran my first marathon at 25."
With a month of chemotherapy up in Philadelphia (Wills Eyes Hospital) under the watchful eyes of sister Rebecca, now 65 ("and extremely healthy") and that two-mile run in her, Fortson felt like the running could be her avenue to fighting the demon of the cancer.
"They told me if it stayed away for five years, it was gone," said Fortson. "I was good enough to win age group awards and was okay with that."
That first marathon, at 25, the Disney Marathon in Orlando, was a not-so-great time of about five hours, marking the creation of my bucket list, although most bucket lists are created when life's rigors are over.
"I started thinking of running marathons as my bucket list because I did not know how long I was going to live," said Fortson. "I was proud of myself just for doing it and finishing, but I started thinking about the bucket list and how people die from cancer."
From that 25-year-old marathon, Fortson has built an astounding resume of 5K, 10K, half-marathons, marathons, half-Ironman triathlons, and even a 50Km (30-some miles) record-setting trail run.
Along the way, Fortson got married at 28; Robert for 24 years. She had two children, Madeline, 23, and Phillip, 20. She pursued a career as a speech pathologist for the next 30 years and began working on her Ph.D. at Jacksonville University while teaching.
"Robert, who teaches Technology at Clay High School, has been a Godsend and supportive of everything I have done to keep this thing at bay," said Fortson. "The best thing he does is to pick up the things I leave behind because I would get so tired; kids' practices, cook dinners, stuff like that, and he's been to nearly every race. He understands that running helps lower my stress level. Cancer brings a lot of anxiety."
Over the next 23 years, starting at age 37, Fortson completed eight Boston Marathons, from the first one in 2009 in 3 hours, 17 minutes, to Boston 2023 in 3:51 at 51 years of age, with most of them finishing in under 3 hours and 30 minutes.
Fortson embarked on the Bucket List, which was to run all of the World Major Marathons; Boston, New York (2011, 3:24), Chicago (2018, 3:38), London (2024, 3:31), Berlin (2023, 3:38) and Sydney, Australia (2024, 3:50, jet lagged). And Tokyo will complete the list.
"I was never going to be the fastest runner out there, and I was ok with that," said Fortson. "The bucket list grew into my motivation to keep running and also to be my escape from cancer thoughts. I got very competitive prior to getting the second diagnosis of cancer 23 years later."
The cancer Fortson had at 17 returned and had moved to her liver.
Answer: Surgery followed by a 10-mile pre-surgery run plus more running.
"What else would I do?," said Fortson. "My son suggested a marathon on every continent or the Antarctica Marathon. I got North America done, Asia with Tokyo, Europe with Berlin. Just need Africa, South America and Antarctica. Maybe?"