Cancer doesn’t slow runner Gabriele Grunewald down
This week, she competed. Next week, she starts another round of chemotherapy.
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Marissa Payne.
When Gabriele Grunewald ran the 1500-meter qualifying race at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships on Thursday, she got a standing ovation at the finish line.
With a time of 4:31.18, Grunewald finished last in her heat. But she never expected to advance to the finals. Grunewald was competing less than a month after starting her latest round of chemotherapy.
The former University of Minnesota runner was easily identifiable on the track. Grunewald bares a 13-inch scar that cascades across her ribs and stomach. Grunewald’s scar came from undergoing surgery last August to remove a softball-sized cancerous tumor that had attached itself to her liver, according to the Star Tribune.
While healing from that operation, however, doctors found the cancer had returned again — for the fourth time in the past eight years. This might be enough to slow most people down, but Grunewald isn’t most people.
After the race ended yesterday, her fellow runners huddled around her.
“They wanted to say a prayer for me and just give me well wishes and be supportive of Team Gabe,” Grunewald told Runner’s World. “I’ve had a lot of that support, but it really means a lot [for them] to acknowledge my struggle and just be there for me even though we’re competitors. There’s a sisterhood among all of us.”
This is the eighth year in a row that Grunewald competed for the national USTAF title. She competed for her first in 2009, not long after being diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma of the salivary gland. She underwent surgery then, but would have her second scare in 2011 when her cancer returned in her thyroid gland. The third diagnosis came in 2016 when it spread to her liver and now she’s undergoing treatment for her latest diagnosis in March.
“It just becomes emotionally numbing at some point,” Grunewald, 30, told the Star Tribune last month.
She’s also hopeful about what she can do while undergoing treatment. Grunewald likely understands, however, that she may not be able to perform at her best, a lesson she learned when she ran a race in Nashville and uncharacteristically finished in last place.
