The crowd that carries you along the avenues of the Big Apple, the roar of supporters that rises from the depth of concrete and glass canyons… All this, Malika Kacel can already imagine. “I’m going to take the emotion in the head, that’s for sure; I wouldn’t be surprised if I cried, ” she confides from her city of Bordeaux, a few hours from taking the plane to fly to New York and her marathon. The 39-year-old nurse will have more than one reason to be moved.
In 2016, she was 35 when she discovered a lump in her right breast. A few days later, blood tests confirm cancer … at the same time as she learns of her third pregnancy. She decides to wait for delivery before starting treatment. She will undergo a double mastectomy. But will also discover a cause, and friends forever. Because with her surgeon, AmélieGesson-Paute, she embarked on a raid in Lapland in 2018 organized by the association Défid’Elles, for the benefit of Keep a Breast, a foundation that works for the prevention of breast cancer.
It is with the same group that she arrives this year in New York. They are 19 women – and one man – who will run under the colors of Défid’Elles. Malika Kacel is the only cancer survivor of the lot, but the others are all concerned and activists for the cause, such as former swimming champion Laure Manaudou. Or the journalist Valérie Trierweiler. She swears that long-distance running isn’t her thing. “ They more or less forced me… I had to be a companion, there was one bib left, I ended up saying yes,” she says.
The former First Lady has been with the group since 2018. She had covered the Lapland raid, then, already the New York marathon for Paris Match. At the time, 5 Défid’Elles runners had done the race in a very special way: they had taken with them 42 photos of breast cancer patients. At each kilometer, they brandished and presented to the public one of the photos. “ I found myself trained then, to do the women’s raids of Defid’Elles first, then this marathon now. I didn’t really train for a marathon; I’ve never run a semi, but all together we experience such strong emotions, it makes you surpass yourself (…). And then the objective is only to go to the end, I believe in it! “.
In 2018, when the marathon was held for the first time, it was possible to raise funds and buy an ultrasound machine for the Suipacha Hospital, and this year it is expected to be able to contribute “with supplies, equipment and technology,” the organizers pointed out.
Word against cancer will spread in Valencia on November 19. Eight Madrid health workers fight this disease with and without a gown. In hospitals and also on the streets of five Spanish cities.
Yesterday the Pink Marathon was held, organized by the Physical Education Center No. 22 of Paso de Los Libres, within the framework of awareness month on breast cancer prevention, with a wide call that brought together women and men of different ages, and to which the Police Station for Women and Minors, recently inaugurated, also accompanied.
According to a study from Tel Aviv University (Israel) published in the scientific journal Cancer Research, running can reduce cancer metastasis by up to 72%. This is supported by the data collected during 20 years of the life of 3,000 adults and tests on rodents carried out by a team of experts led by Professor Carmit Levy, from the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University.
According to the author of the study, the physical adaptation to running “has turned these organs into effective energy-consuming machines, much like muscles.” “What’s more, when a person exercises regularly, this condition becomes permanent: the tissues of the internal organs change and become similar to muscle tissue, ” explained the researcher at the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry of the University of Tel Aviv University.
When it comes to triathlons, thoughts often go to the Ironman, one of the toughest and most tiring competitions that exist. You have to try your hand in sequence with almost four kilometers of swimming, 180 km of cycling and, to top it off, a marathon (about 42 km). In reality, however, this multisport can be modulated in various formulas with different distances, so much so that today it is increasingly being offered to children as well. Moreover, in the Covid-19 era, the triathlon offers the significant advantage of being practiced mainly outdoors.