Running against cancer | Riley Senft | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED conferences.
Inspired by a succession of family and friends diagnosed with prostate cancer, Riley recently ran 6,600km across Canada to convince men to "Step Into Action" towards early detection.

Hi, I'm Riley,

I am an anesthesiologist from Vancouver,

and last summer I ran across Canada.

My story begins in 2007

when my dad was diagnosed
with prostate cancer.

He had surgery to remove
his prostate in the spring of 2008.

Shortly after that, my grandfather
died of prostate cancer,

and within about six months,

two of my really close friends
were diagnosed with prostate cancer.

18 months after that,
my dad's prostate cancer came back.

So over the course of two,
two and a half years,

prostate cancer was this thing
that sort of thrust itself into my life,

and became a big part of it.

It wasn't something that I was expecting,

it wasn't something
that I know I heard a lot about,

and it was something that I felt like,

I wanted to do something against,

and to raise awareness for.

Prostate cancer doesn't just affect
my family, as you heard,

it is quite a common cancer;

it's actually one in six men
[who] will get prostate cancer.

That's more common than breast cancer.

Those people who do get it,

--if I look around the room here,
and say there's 300 people in the room--

If a 150 of you are men,

25 of you will get prostate cancer.

Of those 25, four of you will die from it.

Those of you who don't,
don't escape completely,

the surgery and treatment
for prostate cancer

can have devastating complications

like impotence,
incontinence, and depression.

That obviously
doesn't just affect the men,

all the women in the audience,
have fathers and brothers, sons,

and it's really a whole family issue.

I decided that I wanted to do something,

and running across Canada

was the biggest thing
that I could think of to do,

that would raise
the most amount of awareness.

In May of 2011, I set off
from the small little island you can see

on the far right-hand side
of the map there;

that's a place called
Cape Spear, Newfoundland,

it's the most easterly part
of North America.

I ran 70 kilometers a day over the course
of five months to get to Vancouver.

To put that into European perspective,

that's like running from London to Moscow,

and then turning around and running back,

(Laughter)

and then turning north and running
600 kilometers up to Edinburgh.

It was quite a distance,

but just running wasn't going do it,

I needed a way to let people know
what I was doing.

I came up with a charity
and we would call it "Step into Action,"

because we're trying to get men
to step into action and go get tested.

We had the money

linked to a Vancouver-based
Prostate Cancer Research Centre,

which was one of the foremost

prostate cancer research centres
in the world,

but even that wasn't enough
to let people know what we were doing.

We felt like we needed a cool slogan,

because everybody needs a cool slogan.

One of the difficulties
with prostate cancer is

if you want to get a man
to go see his GP

when he's healthy and has
no symptoms, is pretty hard.

If you try to get him to go see his GP,

and tell him he is going to get
a prostate exam,

(Laughter)

it's even harder.

What we tried to do is use
that idea, and we said, literally:

"One finger can save your life."

(Laughter)

And so, I spent last summer giving
prostate cancer the finger.

(Laughter)

We came up with all the promotional
material we could think of,

we put out information cards,

we came up with prostate cancer ties,
and pins, and wristbands.

We sent out name badges and buttons,

and we went on every radio,
newspaper, and television show

that would have us
and that we could find.

And we did everything
that we could to raise awareness.

And what started as this campaign
to raise awareness for prostate cancer,

ended up being
the biggest adventure of my life.

When I started off,
I didn't really know what to expect,

but as it started to build,
it became quite awesome.

I got to meet thousands
of prostate cancer survivors,

which was great for my own psyche.

I got to take part...

I'm a big sports fan, and I got
to do the halftime shows

at some football games,
and my local ice hockey game,

and we were able to reach hundreds
of thousands of men through that media.

As the momentum built and we got closer
to Vancouver, which is where I'm from,

I had police and fire truck escorts,
which I thought it was awesome.

(Laughter)

As I ran into Vancouver, they actually
relit the Olympic Cauldron for us,

and I finished my run
by jumping into the Pacific Ocean,

and I had 1,200 kids
from my old school there with me.

It was absolutely awesome.

But, by no means, was it just,
you know, fun and easy.

It was a bit grueling, it was monotonous;

running seven to eight hours a day

can get you through
your iTunes library fairly quickly.

(Laughter)

It had things that I like to call
the five H's, where the first was 'hills,'

there's a lot of them in Canada.

Don't know if you guys
heard of the Rocky Mountains.

(Laughter)

There's the 'heat' and 'humidity.'

It was 44 degrees Celsius
and 80 to 90% humidity,

I was wringing my shirt and my shorts out
every two or three kilometers.

The 'headwind' was immense,

I was going east to west,
so I had one everyday,

and sometimes
I had to sneak in behind my RV,

so that I could keep moving forward.

And then there was the 'hunger,'
and I was hungry all the time.

(Laughter)

But the worst part by far,
were the blisters.

I didn't have a lot of time to train,
--I live in Winnipeg at the moment,

it's -40°C in the winter
when I was trying to train

it's not the most conducive to running--
and when I started off, my feet felt it.

I had blisters everyday
until I got to Calgary,

which is about 5,000 kilometers away,

and this photo is taken
from a hospital, two weeks into the run,

where I ended up
having to sort of take a little break,

while I got attended to.

People love to talk
and ask me about statistics,

so I've put in some here for you.

I ran 6,621 kilometers
and went through eight pairs of shoes.

I actually lost 46 pounds,

despite the fact that I was eating
even when I was running.

We raised close to 600,000 dollars
and we're still climbing.

I ran, towards the end, 70 kilometers
a day and maxed that around 80.

With running five-and-half
to six-and-half min/km,

that took seven to eight hours a day
to get through what I was doing.

I learned a lot during this trip.

[One] of the lessons I learned

was the power of being
completely unreasonable.

I had this idea to run across Canada,
and a lot of people told me that it was...

"You'll take too long and [it'll] be
too complicated logistically."

One of my favorite quotes
is from Mark Twain,

and I'm paraphrasing
when I say that he said:

"The reasonable man
adapts himself to the world around him.

The unreasonable man tries to adapt
the world around him to himself,

that's why most progress
is made by unreasonable men."

The next thing I learned
was the power to inspire.

If you have a great idea,
people get excited about it,

and if you can get people
excited about your cause,

then you can get them
to become partners in your cause,

and that helps you build
support and momentum.

I tried to build a team around me
that was excited about what I was doing,

and from there we were able
to build sponsors and get momentum

and that's when our campaign
really started to kick-off.

The next thing I learned
was the power of creating a diverse team.

I spent eight hours a day running, I spent
the rest of the time eating or sleeping.

I didn't have a lot of time to be doing

a lot of the promotions
that I wanted to be doing.

But I had a campaign manager who was great
at coming up with things like,

"One finger can save your life,"

I had a road manager who was relentless
at keeping our morale up,

and would hand me sandwiches and say:

--even though they were
the same sandwiches everyday--

"Today guess what? The lettuce
is next to the tomato."

(Laughter)

"Yesterday it was next to the cheese."

And I had a family that was fantastic
at helping, get support,

get sponsors, and create events.

The last thing I learned
was the power of making it personal.

I could have gone door-to-door and said:
"I'm here, running about prostate cancer,

and I want you to go to your GP,
and have a prostate exam."

And that would work to a certain extent,

but would also be
a little bit more difficult.

I tried to make it about my grandfather,
my father, myself,

and then I tried to make it about
your grandfather, father, and yourself,

or the man in your life.

And I found that to be
a lot more successful.

So when I started this, I had a big dream
that I was going to do this

and try to figure out the ways to raise
the most amount of awareness.

I had to take that dream off the shelf
and start working at it bit by bit,

but it ended up being
a fantastic experience.

Like I said, one in six men
get prostate cancer,

but for my dad it was one in six,
my grandfather is one in six,

and is a very good possibility

that both my brother and myself
could be one in six.

So thank you.

(Applause)