In the Running World and Beyond, Being #BraveLikeGabe

By | June 15, 2019

Welcome to the Running newsletter! Every Saturday morning, we email runners with news, advice and some motivation to help you get up and running. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

On Tuesday, the running world lost a good one. Gabriele Grunewald, a track champion, died of complications from cancer. She was 32.

Her cancer wasn’t a surprise. She was given a diagnosis of adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare metastatic cancer, in 2009, while a senior in college. At first, she kept her condition and treatments she underwent while competing as a professional runner private, but then opened up about what she was going through.

“I’m a young adult with cancer,” Grunewald told The New York Times in 2017. “I don’t always love talking about it. It’s not a made-for-TV movie. It’s real. It’s scary.”

She started the Brave Like Gabe foundation to raise awareness for rare cancers and how little research is directed toward these diseases. It’s why everyone from USA Track & Field to the HGTV star Chip Gaines was tweeting with #bravelikegabe this week.

You can read her obituary here. Michael Powell, who wrote about Grunewald in 2017, also wrote a remembrance. I also recommend this Runner’s World piece, which was researched and written in the last year, but just posted this week.

Are you doing something this weekend to be #bravelikegabe? Let me know — I’m on Twitter @byjenamiller.

Gabriele Grunewald, Runner Who Chronicled Journey With Cancer, Dies at 32

Track Star Gabriele Grunewald Couldn’t Win This Race

Read More:  NAM aidsmap partners with Animade on new World AIDS Day film U=U

Chemotherapy, Then the U.S. World Championships, for Gabriele Grunewald

Pushing the Limits of Human Endurance

Well