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ST. PETERSBURG — Mark McBride props his feet up as he leans back in his front porch rocking chair and thinks back to a time when things seemed much simpler.
McBride knew little about melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer that nearly robbed him of his life in 2002 before leaving him with a couple of barely visible scars from a five-hour surgery.
Melanoma was never a concern for McBride, an outdoors enthusiast who grew up in St. Pete Beach and counts marathons and triathlons, activities that require extreme exposure to the sun, among his passions.
"Every day of the year, it was go out, get sunburned, wake up the next day, peel, get sunburned again and again," he said.
Heck, McBride did not even know what melanoma looked like.
Luckily for him, a friend did.
• • •
Wendy Johnson and McBride met years ago during a Wednesday night swim in Pass-a-Grille. Both were members of the St. Pete Mad Dogs triathlon club.
"I got to know them pretty well through the club events," said McBride, who will compete in Saturday's St. Beach Classic. "Wendy and her husband, Al, they're just really nice people."
Johnson and McBride were chatting at a group event one day when Johnson's gaze drifted toward McBride's neck, fixating on a curious-looking freckle no bigger than a pinkie fingernail.
Johnson, stitches lining the side of her face from the removal of a melanoma a few days earlier, was concerned.
"Wendy said, 'You know, Mark, you should get that looked at,' " McBride said. "I said okay, and of course, I didn't do anything about it."
A month later, the two ran into each other again. Johnson's eyes went searching for that same freckle as she told McBride how a biopsy had confirmed a piece cut out of her ear was melanoma.
She begged her fair-skinned friend to get checked out.
"She gave me some heck about it," McBride said, laughing.
A few days later, McBride visited John Kirk in St. Petersburg. The doctor cut a piece out of McBride's neck and stitched him up. Five days later, McBride, then 39, got a call from Kirk as he prepared for a hunting trip in Georgia: "Mark, listen, that spot on your neck was not good. It's melanoma, and we need to do something quick."
The melanoma had progressed to borderline Stage 3, in which the cancer has spread to one or more lymph nodes. It took 70 stitches to form the Z-pattern scar on McBride's neck.
"All I know is that once it gets to your lymph nodes, it's bad," McBride said. "Dr. Kirk said to me, 'If this hadn't been found and you had waited, the outcome would not have been good.' "
• • •
Johnson was diagnosed with brain cancer in February 2009. The melanoma that started near her temple and was believed to be gone from her body had metastasized.
During Johnson's initial diagnosis, doctors told her there was only a 3 percent chance the cancer would spread.
She died in April at age 50.
McBride is quick to note Johnson's cancer reappeared 10 years after her initial surgery. McBride, now 48, is nine years removed from his surgery.
"If Wendy just hadn't said anything and not been persistent," McBride says, shaking his head. "It's easy to sit here and say Wendy saved my life. All I do know is that I probably wouldn't be sitting here if she hadn't just said, 'You know, Mark, you need to get that looked at.' "
McBride, for the first time, will run the St. Pete Beach Classic, which passes his old house along the beach on 59th Avenue.
Johnson and her husband founded Motion Sports Management, which spawned the St. Pete Beach Classic in 2004 and resurrected the Bay to Bay Road Race in St. Petersburg a year later.
Both popular races were canceled last year. And truth be told, the St. Pete Beach Classic probably wouldn't be running Saturday if it weren't for an outpouring of support from the community.
"I had basically decided that I wasn't going to do it," Al Johnson said. "I really didn't have the heart for it or the energy because Wendy and I worked well as a team."
The city of St. Pete Beach has taken over the race in partnership with the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce and Motion Sports Management, which Al Johnson continues to run.
"I want to make sure that the race is off and running with the new organization, and it's being done to a level and quality that Wendy would be proud of," he said.
McBride will compete in the 10-kilometer race, partly to pay tribute to the woman who likely saved his life, partly to raise awareness for melanoma.
"I guess I'm doing it because I haven't run it before, and it seems like the right thing to do," he said. "I'll definitely be thinking of Wendy a little bit. I'm sure everybody else will, too."
Bryan Burns can be reached at bburns@tampabay.com.
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