When Catherine received her Early-Onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Anthony Copeland-Parker faced the kind of moment that tests everything a person believes about love, commitment, and resilience. Many people in his position might have stepped back or prepared for decline. Instead, Anthony and Catherine made an unexpected choice: they would not let the disease define their story. They would write their own.
This is not a story about beating illness through willpower alone. Running With Cat tells the honest account of what it means to love someone while watching them change, to adapt when plans shift, and to find meaning in the smallest moments as time becomes more precious.
The Turning Point: Making a Bold Choice
Anthony and Catherine were both endurance athletes in their fifties. They had built lives around movement, challenge, and exploration. When Catherine’s diagnosis came, Anthony faced his own health crisis as well: he needed a heart-valve replacement. They could have chosen the safe path. Instead, they chose adventure.
They sold their home, retired from their careers, and became nomads. For eight-plus years, they ran marathons and half-marathons across the globe, traveling from Atlanta to Antarctica and everywhere in between. They ran in Madagascar, Bhutan, on the Great Wall of China, and in the Australian Outback. They were not running away from the disease. They were running toward life.
This decision reveals something essential about partnership during serious illness: sometimes the most loving thing is not to minimize challenge or retreat into comfort, but to seize what time and energy remain and use it fully.
Love in Motion: An Offbeat Story
Anthony’s first book, ‘Running All Over the World,’ adapted from a blog he wrote during their travels, reads as part travelogue and part medical memoir. It captures what it looks like to live out of a suitcase, to navigate airports and languages and time zones, and to do it all while managing a progressive neurological disease.
But beneath the exotic locations and the race finishes lies an offbeat love story. It is the story of an ex-pilot with a passion for vistas and logistics, paired with a woman so determined that she runs a half-marathon in the Australian Outback mere weeks after breaking her ankle. It is the story of two people who finished every race they ran hand in hand.
That image matters. Hand in hand is not metaphorical. In serious illness, partnership becomes a physical reality in ways healthy relationships may never require. You are supporting each other literally and figuratively.
When the Pace Slows: The Second Journey
After five years of nomadic racing, the disease progressed as Early-Onset Alzheimer’s does. The fast pace of international marathons gave way to a slower rhythm. The couple adapted their travel, their activities, and their expectations. But adaptation is not the same as acceptance of defeat. It is a pivot.
Anthony’s second memoir, ‘One Footstep at a Time,’ chronicles the next five years as the disease progressed and the promise of a nearby cure faded. This book is where the real weight of caregiving becomes visible. It is also where the depth of commitment shows most clearly.
Many caregivers speak of the exhaustion, the grief, the loss of the person they loved even before physical death. Anthony shares these truths with unflinching honesty. But he also shows what it looks like to keep showing up, to keep finding meaning, to keep treating each day as something worth living fully.
The Importance of Telling True Stories
There are many books about illness, caregiving, and loss. What sets Running With Cat apart is its grounding in real experience and its male caregiving perspective. Most caregiving narratives center on women. Anthony’s voice offers something less commonly heard: a man’s account of devotion, vulnerability, and the practical and emotional weight of caring for a partner with progressive cognitive decline.
True stories matter for caregivers and family members facing similar journeys. Sanitized accounts can leave people feeling alone when their experience does not match a polished narrative. Anthony’s writing is candid about the highs and lows, the triumphs and setbacks. That honesty creates permission for others to stop pretending everything is fine and to acknowledge how hard this actually is.
They also matter for readers drawn to narrative nonfiction and stories of human resilience. These memoirs prove that a love story does not end when disease arrives. It changes shape. It demands more. And somehow, in that demand, it can deepen.
Beyond the Pages: A Commitment to Others
A portion of the proceeds from both ‘Running All Over the World’ and ‘One Footstep at a Time’ are donated to organizations supporting Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers. This choice reflects the central value of the Running With Cat platform: that Catherine’s story and Anthony’s love are not just personal narratives. They are resources for others walking similar paths.
When someone reads these memoirs and sees their own exhaustion, fear, or unexpected moments of joy reflected back, they know they are not alone. That recognition can be transformative.
What Partnership Really Means
Serious illness reveals the truth about partnership in a way few other experiences can. It asks the question: are we together because life is easy, or are we together because we have chosen each other? Anthony and Catherine’s answer is written across 12 years of travel, across two continents, across a disease that rewrites its own rules.
Partnership through serious illness is not romantic in the way movies depict it. It is harder and more complicated. It requires grace, adaptation, and a willingness to grieve while still living. It requires the kind of love that shows up not in grand gestures but in the small, daily choice to keep going together.
If you are a caregiver, a family member, an endurance athlete, or simply someone drawn to stories of real human connection, Running With Cat offers something rare: a honest, moving account of what love looks like when everything changes. These memoirs are not just books about illness. They are books about choosing each other, again and again, one footstep at a time.