Cancer Survivors Team Up to Participate in a Half-Marathon

Marlyn Glickman and Michele Conley don't seem as though they'd have a lot in common. Glickman, 59, had until recently never run a mile outdoors in her life. Conley, 46, went to college on a volleyball scholarship. Glickman, by her own admission, had allowed her body and diet to get seriously out of shape by middle age, while Conley has always maintained a high state of fitness and eaten very healthfully.

But in fact the two have a great deal in common. Both have survived breast cancer. Both have used that experience as incentive to embrace life more fully.

And both have just finished running a half-marathon in New York's Central Park.

For Glickman, who lives in Rockville, the run was a physical challenge that symbolized her approach to facing life's inevitable hurdles. For Conley, of Chevy Chase, taking part in More magazine's 13.1-mile race was a hoot, a celebration of companionship with other women who've been through what she's been through and come out smiling.

I learned about Glickman and Conley through Pamela Peeke, a Bethesda-based physician, diet-and-fitness guru and best-selling author of "Body for Life for Women." Peeke was enlisted by More to coach a group of cancer survivors from across the country, preparing them for the run and accommodating the special concerns facing a woman who wants to lace up her sneakers even while still under treatment.

Glickman, who co-owns a consulting company with her husband, met Peeke 15 years ago. As she approached her 45th birthday, Glickman says, "I was in horrible condition, 60 pounds overweight. I thought I was doing well by cutting back on fat, but I was eating a box of fat-free cookies at a time. Not the proper nutrition, by any means. I really needed to get myself back in shape."

Peeke helped Glickman eat more consciously and healthfully, primarily through keeping a journal in which Glickman says she recorded "everything I put in my mouth." Glickman was pleased as she watched those 60 pounds disappear. "I thought of it as 'weight removal,' " Glickman says. "If I 'lost' it, I'd always found it, before."

At age 52, she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. "Here I went to the effort to take care of myself" and still got cancer, she says. "I was a little upset."

But getting herself in shape turned out to help her endure lumpectomy and chemotherapy. "I had learned to take care of myself," she says. "If I hadn't known how to eat properly by that point, I would have gone back to my old habits and been in even worse shape." That attitude kept her going after a second cancer in the same breast led her to a mastectomy.

Conley was 35 when she learned she had breast cancer. "I was always super, super athletic, and also a really healthy eater," she says. She'd also had her babies early and breast-fed all four, both things that are supposed to offer protection against breast cancer. When her oncologist told her the lump in her breast was malignant, she said, "I don't get it. This doesn't make sense."

But Conley, a State Farm insurance agent, didn't dwell on her misfortune for long. Largely for the sake of her kids, she resolved to meet her cancer head-on. Her doctor introduced her to Peeke, who advised her on nutrition and recommended that she take such supplements as flaxseed and fish oil and drink large amounts of water to help get rid of the toxins from chemotherapy.

Beyond that, Conley credits Peeke's stress-management counseling for helping her to accept adversity as part of life, and to move on. Conley had to draw on Peeke's lessons again when a second lump was discovered six years ago. Conley decided she wanted to be "done with this" and opted for a bilateral mastectomy and a hysterectomy. Then she went about starting the Living in Pink Foundation, which raises money for breast cancer research (and for which Peeke is the volunteer medical adviser).