Running Through Cancer Jason Noel interview part two

I like long runs with my friends where I can be philosophical about life and share and recap you know , what's happening in their lives with them . More than it's fun , it's a journey happening in their lives with them .

More than it's fun , it's a journey Number two , recognizing that , after my relationship with God , it's my relationship with my wife and then , you know , last but certainly not least , just taking care of my family and children . The running is a tool to allow me to be better at those things .

Now , in the second part of my discussion with Jason Noel , we continue with his journey of recovery with running . But this story goes beyond running achievements . It reveals deep life lessons .

Before his diagnosis , he thought corporate success and titles were the most important things , but after facing brain cancer , he realised that his priorities were faith , marriage and family . Running became more than just physical therapy . For him , it was a way to heal , build communities and raise money for brain cancer research .

I really do hope you enjoy our chat , and if you haven't listened to part one , then please do go back to the previous week in our catalogue . So , have you had any other seizures apart from the one that you had initially

?

But I'll tell you , it's another humbling experience because when you share a network of uh experiences , like I've had with other brain tumor patients and some of who I know have recently , you know , had recurrences and seizures , I think I'm going to pay attention and continue to take that , that medicine .

But , um , you know , there are key things I don't like to . I don't like to go on long runs by myself in the fear of something happening . I don't like to travel long distances by myself , so I surround myself with what I call insulation , and that's insulation of people who understand it and get it and can be prepared in the event that the worst happens .

Yeah , yeah .

To a certain extent , you know , like you , like you , you , you had this determination to keep moving and then obviously your fitness level did kind of uh improve .

. Um , I was . I was at the uh , what they call the tumor board , that's the radiation oncologist , chemo oncologist and and brain surgeon .

I was there in the room with them all and I don't know what I was , what I was thinking , but I thought I'm going to run a half marathon and just uh , just uh , and and admittedly , I had never run a uh , organized half marathon in my life at that time , right , but I was like I'm going to run a half marathon .

And they're like , yeah , I don't , I don't know about that . And I was like , no , no , no , I am . And so I pulled out my cell phone and I went to Disney run and they had a Disney half princess marathon coming up in like six months . And I called this , this peer of mine , tom , who I referred to earlier .

Yeah , I said hey , we're going to run this half marathon on the speaker phone in the , in the doctor's office , and he's like and his wife , karen and my wife are all there . And they're like I don't know if that's going to work out that way . I was like , no , I'm , I'm signing up , I'm , I'm signing up . I'm signing up right now , so I signed up there .

Um how I got in I don't know , because it feels like an act of Congress to get in some of those things . I thought , well , I guess the next thing I have to do is train . So um I'm not exaggerating when I yeah yeah , so I was taking chemotherapy and training for a half marathon for six to eight months and to this day I do not know .

I don't know how I did it . I don't know , I do not know , can't explain it was you ?

Um so you were just monitoring how , how far you were going yeah , brian , it's ridiculous because I wasn't paying attention to heart like heart rate like nothing wasn't fueling , like I just no , we just we're like well , we'll just go out here and muster this and see what we can do today and and if we , we make it , we make it , and that that's how it worked

. Did you enjoy it ? I loved every minute of it and still do I think that make it .

But I got involved with the American Brain Tumor Association and they are based out of Chicago and Chicago is the nearest , closest big city to me and , understanding that there was this other world out there you know the Abbott big six and stuff I was like I wonder what it would take to run a marathon and so I put my name in the lottery and didn't get in .

But the American Brain Tumor Association had some slots and so I went the fundraising journey and through the ABTA they partnered with CARA , c-a-r-a out of Chicago , a huge running community , and put together a training program for everyone .

And that was my first introductory to like formalized training and what it meant , to what I would say go to the big league , take it from from a you know a 10 K around the neighborhood to a half to . Okay , we're , we're entering another universe here . Any , any injuries I've had some trouble with with an IT band .

Aside from that , no , no significant injuries and , knock on wood , we'll keep it that way . But yeah , it was a pretty fulfilling experience to cross that finish line for the first time as a as a marathon runner , and do it , you know , with the brain tumor , brain cancer community behind I'm always , um , I mean , I tried , um , like you said .

I kind of get the impression that you are kind of floating on air because of the support of the crowd , um , and also the fact that you know you're you're running for a charity as well .

, the training is fun , but the training can be painful as well . I'll tell you the energy of a city like Chicago , which I've now done twice , or new york city , which I did with the national brain tumor society , right , um , another organization around this .

But when you get to cities like those and the , you know , the two of the largest cities in america , the city shuts down and everybody comes outside to rally runners like a party . There's , it'll lift you right off the ground . I mean it is incredible , yeah , incredible , yeah , yeah .

So I've now decided , after Chicago twice and Chicago last year was 30 days just short of 30 days to New York City , so I did those back to back , I decided I needed more punishment and this year I'm going to uh , run the Berlin marathon with the ABTA and the Chicago marathon , yeah , All right , I was going to ask if you were looking to do one abroad , so

yeah , yeah , yeah , I , I , uh , I uh , I've applied for them all for them all yeah , um , and had this really odd feeling that I would end up in like australia or tokyo , just by lottery , because they're the furthest and most difficult to get to .

Yeah , had a sigh of relief when I didn't get into either one , but I'm super excited about going to berlin yeah , yeah , that should be quite something .

But you've had a thought , um , I know it's very popular these days about the ultra route , doing an ultra um , you know , I my first or only closest thing to an ultra so far was in january of this year and it was over four days . But I did the Disney dopey Right . Um .

So the five K , 10 K , half and full in , um , I think , before I go the ultra route , I want to try the half Ironman , that's where my head's at .

But not that it not that I wouldn't try them both , but I've already fixed , fixed my mind on that .

I know , I know , sometimes when you're fundraising over here and you get a , a slot for a charity , then obviously you have to raise x number of pounds or dollars or whatever to get that slot for someone who was looking to fundraise for a charity . I mean , is there any advice you would give ?

They have to have money to functionally operate and serve their mission or goal , and it doesn't matter what the mission or goal is , they need cashflow . And so if you're going to fundraise for a charity or nonprofit , all I can say to anybody is that , number one uh , you got to believe in what it's doing .

And I know in this big six world there's a lot of people I've met several who have just taken charity slots because it's the only slot and the only way they could get into that particular run . And then you know they don't have the energy behind it necessarily to raise the funds associated with the commitment . So you got , you got to believe it . Number one .

Number two so you got to believe it . Number one . Number two what I have found from experience is that the quicker you can get the baseline commitment out of the way , the more you can focus on the training . Agreed Chicago twice as well as the New York city once .

I've generally gotten the money raised within about the first 90 days or so , um , that way I could put the money behind me and let it , let the money face , you know follow me versus chasing it , and chase and chase , the end result , which is the run .

Yeah , okay , well , that's fine , and then you got to be creative with how you do it , whether it's you know , social media t-shirts .

My daughter built a fairy garden on a local running trail here and her and her friend and we put it on social media and people go by the fairy garden and scan a QR code and we raised a couple thousand bucks from people walking the trail . All right Wow a couple thousand bucks from people walking the trail .

All right , wow , yeah , yeah , it's awesome , it's all I mean .

, it's pretty awesome . But yeah , you know word , word of mouth . There's , there's , no , there's no easy recipe . I'm working with the jewelry store right now in my local town . Um , I have this thing for watches . I love watches you can't buy time . There's so much about a watch that's just significant .

You know it's , it shows the precious value commodity of time or life and etc . But you can go into the jewelry store and they'll . They'll replace your watch battery for free . And if you don't , if , uh , if , if you want to pay , what they they have on the counter of the store is a box .

So instead of paying them to replace the watch battery , you put your money in the box to support a charity , and right now they're supporting the ABTA on my behalf for the Berlin Marathon . So there's all kinds of creative ways to get it done .

It takes place in May , so that'll be fun , and then there are several runs Partly on the track .

It's a brain tumor awareness month globally , the month of so may is full of activities all right , okay , um , and in terms of , do you do ?

Thank you for the friendly reminder , Brian .

Is there any goals that you have beyond that ? Because I understand that ? I mean talking to you now . It seems that you know setting yourself targets and goals has very much been an integral part of your recovery has very much been an integral part of your recovery .

And I appreciate you inviting me , but as I look at goals , I would love to complete all major six now I guess seven and do it on behalf of this community and , as Pitbull says , take it worldwide right the message associated with brain tumors and brain cancer awareness . That's a goal , but you know , I think the goal that continues .

The two or three goals that continue to stick out to me are number one my faith journey .

Uh , these other things are , are , I wouldn't call them hobbies , they're they're , but they're definitely goals , um , but um , I'm not sure I would even see a difference between hobby and goal now that I think about it , but those are , those are the most important things to me , Um , on an ongoing basis , those , those three relationships , spiritual relationship with

my spouse and

children .

The message has been very simple to you know , to yourself , as it were you know , even if it means that I'm going to get out of bed initially , and then , two years on , you know , you're , you're , you're looking at completing marathons . So I kind of get that impression that it has .

salaries , et cetera and I worked for some amazing leaders and some amazing organizations and got to travel the globe and just thought I had it all and then got knocked down a little bit by the health journey and quickly being married to the preacher's daughter and having an opportunity to look at myself in the mirror , think about her , think about him , think about

my own parents , et cetera . I started this self-discovery progress right away after being diagnosed with a brain tumor and I kept a journal and social media as the outlet .

But the idea behind it was that I wanted to find , in the spirit of 42 , I wanted to come up with what I called 42 life , you know life lessons that I put you know context around that would really become kind of the chapters of these 42 thoughts that have gotten me up to that point and can carry me forward .

And you know whether that's a journal , a future book or whatever it may be . It was a great experience to stop and reflect and think about those lessons and use writing as a way to do it .

. There were days where I didn't know who I was .

You know , if you , if you kind of back it up , and I just can't imagine the stories that they say and think , gosh , really Okay , that's crazy .

And yet they're just incredibly powerful young people who get things differently than a lot of kids their age , witnessing some of the experiences they've had .

Now , I know as part of the I didn't include this as part of the outline , but I thought I'd give maybe a few quickfire questions , if that's okay with you Okay , okay , so do you have a sporting icon ?

But on hard days there's a few songs that I like a lot that will push me through . One of them's called Push Comes to Shove from an American iconic rock band called Jackal . But yeah , I listened to everything .

What's your preference ?

They get up early in the morning and I get up early and they're there every single time and they don't miss a beat .

And uh , if I'm slacking , they're like uh-uh , pick it up , they're , they're just , they're good , they're , they're amazing , they're amazing , they're fun , and they all have wonderful husbands who I I get along with perfectly and it's like it's just , it's fun , it's fun so are you when you're going to Berlin , are you going with a group , with your training group ?

So I'm going with my friend Tom , who I referenced a few times , and then I'll also be there with a woman and her husband , and she is a training partner of mine .