After a Year of Health Challenges, Kaliswa Brewster Is Taking On 13.1

Kaliswa Brewster is an actress in NYC who has appeared on television shows such as Billions and Blue Bloods. Last March, as the pandemic was sweeping the globe, she had surgery for dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP), a very rare type of skin cancer.

This March, she will be running the Virtual United Airlines NYC Half.

Kaliswa’s surgery, which ended up being much more involved than expected, left her with a large scar that her family now calls her “back zipper.” She was unable to walk, run, or even roll over post-surgery, and during that time she also contracted a serious case of COVID-19. For a time she couldn’t even reach for her toothbrush.

A committed runner who has finished the New Balance Bronx 10 Mile and the NYRR Staten Island Half, Kaliswa started walking and running again in June. Since then, running has helped her get back to full health. She’s completed half a dozen NYRR virtual races, and in October she ran the NYRR Return to Racing Project 5K Randall’s Island. “I was so happy,” Kaliswa said. “You could NOT tell me that 5K was not as significant as a full-on marathon. I spent the first quarter mile sobbing/smiling and the last full mile laughing/smiling.”

Kaliswa has dealt with the challenges she's faced over the past year by joining different coaching groups—including NYRR Coaching Lab—and religious groups and leaning on her friends.

“The Coaching Lab community has been utterly amazing,” she said. “From day one I felt plugged in and welcomed to a whole family of runners from all over.” Though she’s improved both her endurance and speed, the bigger takeaway has been the group’s closeness and camaraderie. “We cheer one another on when we are having hard days or bad runs. We groan together at tough workouts. I love it so much,” she said.

She looks at the Virtual United Airlines NYC Half—which she’ll run from a friend’s apartment in Harlem—as “the icing on the cake” of her 10 weeks of Coaching Lab training.

“Running 13.1 miles means a lot to me as far as how far I’ve come health-wise,” she said. “That I’m running a half marathon when I couldn’t even roll over in bed in March 2020—that’s something worth marking.”