"This was gonna be my first marathon and it was something I was looking forward to doing. Nothing was going to stop me," said /*Angela Alleyne*/, from Brooklyn.
She was training for the 2010 New York City marathon when she injured her left hip and got a surprising diagnosis.
"When they did the MRI literally in the middle, a doctor came in and said, 'Can we have permission to look at your right hip?'" she added.
Turns out she had a cancerous tumor called /*Sarcoma*/ in her right hip.
"It felt as if my whole world was turned upside down," Angela said.
But she ran that marathon anyway and had the cancer surgery 8 days later.
"Running helped me see that there's nothing I really cannot do if I really put my mind to it," she said.
Angela was just featured on the cover of /*Runner's World Magazine*/ as part of a new campaign called /*Outrunning Cancer*/, linking runners to cancer charities. According to a new survey by the magazine, 86% of runners race once a year for a cancer charity.
Last year alone they found that runners raised more than $650 million for cancer research.
And that connection between running and fighting cancer goes deeper. Many runners are cancer survivors.
And patients often say that fighting cancer is like running a marathon, you keep going when all you want to do is quit.
"It's keeping me really strong," said /*Noirin Lucas*/, a marathon runner from Manhattan.
She continued to race even after learning last year that her breast cancer had spread.
"It just sort of gave me a shock and a shake to say you have a lot of living left to do and there's a lot of fun things I want to do," she said.
For more information on the outrunning cancer campaign and cancer charities that are linked to running, go to www.crowdrise.com/runnersworld.
