Running a marathon doesn't compare to running around the world.
It's a journey that 60-year-old Rose Swale Pope has been on for nearly four years -- the journey of a lifetime. She left her home in Pembrokeshire in western Wales on her 57th birthday to run around the world and hasn't been home since.
"I've run 21,000 miles to get to the start of your race," she said this week. "So another 26.2 miles will be fine."
She's gone through 38 pairs of running shoes and has battled pneumonia, frostbite and weather conditions.
"I haven't wanted to give up because I'm determined to succeed,'' she said. "But the loneliness is like a knife ... I hunger for my family."
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She carries a photograph of her late husband, Clive Pope, close to her heart. Her run is in his memory.
"He went to the doctor and the result was that he had prostate cancer, and it spread to the bone,'' she said. "That's why I'm fighting with all my might."
Her husband's death inspired her to run for cancer awareness. She's not just running for him, but for everyone battling cancer. She wants to give them the courage to keeping fighting.
"The world is my home ... Everybody has become my family,'' she said. "You learn in Siberia that you just have to deal with things and not to fear them but just to throw away fear and worry... you just have to face things and then you can conquer them or minimize them."
Two days ago, Pope says a doctor in Chicago found a lump on her breast, which may be cancerous. She's flying back to Chicago after Grandma's Marathon to have a biopsy.
"But the thing is, it's not going to stop me," she said. "It has made me more determined to run the Duluth marathon, the Grandma's Marathon, and more determined to finish my assignment. Whatever it is, it is going to be dealt with."
Fox 21 is the Duluth News Tribune's news partner.
