Jun 11, 2021
Bravery. Courage. Strength. Vulnerability. Our guest today is
Angela Pohl, one of our own Running for Real community members. She
shares with us the story of her breast cancer diagnostic and
treatment journey as she gets ready for a double mastectomy surgery
on June 11. There’s so much we can all learn from Angela, starting
with her admirable mindset. From her, we learn how we can use our
runner’s attitude of courage and determination as tools to aid us
in some of life’s hardest challenges.
“I had been chronicling my whole running journey for a
couple of years now, and just all of the learnings that I've had
through that, the mental training and all the progress that I made
through that I decided that I was going to be very open about
sharing my breast cancer journey as well because it's a chapter of
my running journey or my overall journey.”
–Angela
Pohl
During 2020, Angela ran 55 half marathons, 13 full marathons, and
was training for a 100-mile ultra when she got diagnosed with
breast cancer. In this episode, she helps us cover…
-
Importance of self-checks and mammograms- even if you believe
yourself to be a healthy runner or athlete.
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Don’t put things off. First it was COVID hesitation to not go to
the doctor’s office, then it was a marathon training cycle putting
off doctor’s visits until she finally went. There’s always
something going on, but checkups are important. Don’t put them
off.
-
“Not everybody who goes through a cancer journey wants to be seen
as a fighter or battling or warrior. Some people are on a healing
journey. They feel that the cancer is part of their body, so they
don't want to fight their own body. They might not want to use that
kind of metaphor just because has some kind of violence, you know,
associated with it. For me it's kind of a journey. I'm a race
addict. And so I thought it would be kind of fun if you can call
this fun at all to, you know, pretend that this is a whole race
that I'm going through, and it's probably more like a multi-leg
ultra marathon.”
-
“That is something that I learned from running about how to stay in
the mile that you're in, not, look all the way down at the results
will start worrying about that because you just need to take it one
mile at a time.”
-
Angela learned that exercise is good while you're going through
chemotherapy. Even just going on a walk.
-
Angela co-founded a non-profit, Good Running, in 2016. Each month
the group of runners selects a non-profit and donate $20 directly
to the organization. They also gather raffle prizes and runners get
a raffle ticket for every mile they run or walk. It’s all about
runners doing good, together.
Resources:
Angela’s Instagram:
@goodrunning26.2
(Message
her some words of kindness and encouragement)
Thank you to Momentous, Athletic Greens, and goodr for
sponsoring this episode.
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Thanks for listening!
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Thank you to Angela, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on
the show.
