These Wausau-area athletes ran with Gabe Grunewald; now they grieve her loss from cancer
WAUSAU - They were there when Gabriele Grunewald was first told she had cancer.
She was Gabriele Anderson then, and only 22 years old. She was a national-caliber runner and team leader for the University of Minnesota. The team was in Arizona, readying for a meet, when she got the phone call from doctors informing her she had adenoid cystic carcinoma in a salivary gland.
On Tuesday, Grunewald died, and the running community across the world mourned. Through her battle with the disease, she touched countless lives, including Wausau-area athletes who competed alongside her.
Kallie Allman, a top runner from D.C. Everest Area Senior High School, was also 22; she was Kallie Suske then. She had been a walk-on runner for the Gophers, just like Grunewald. Injuries derailed her collegiate running, but Allman was kept on the team as an assistant coach.
Grunewald's cancer hit everyone hard.
"We were devastated," Allman said. "We were like, 'You're an elite athlete, you're going to be fine, you're going to beat this.'"
Jayme Dittmar had been a scholarship runner for the University of Minnesota, a highly touted, gutsy 800-meter runner who had won two state titles for Wausau East High School. She was 20, two years behind Grunewald, but the two trained together and ran on a relay team together.
"It was a very, very surreal moment for all of us," after the team was told about the cancer diagnosis, Dittmar said. "She wasn't emotional. That in itself says a lot about Gabe. She just kind of accepted it, like, 'OK, this was going to be the battle. Let's go.' She was so, so strong."
The next day Grunewald ran a personal best on the rack in the 1,500 meters. Neither she or anyone else knew what to expect going forward.
What happened next was she got the cancer treated and she got better as a runner. She came back to run as a Gopher, setting a school record and getting second at the NCAA championships in the 1,500.
The cancer would come back, but still she ran.
At first, she kept her struggle with the disease private. She ran through chemo treatments and surgery, one that removed a tumor that left a huge scar arcing through her abdomen. Through it all, she began to share more and more publicly about living and competing with cancer.
She was featured in the running media and in Sports Illustrated. She finished fourth in the 1,500-meter Olympic qualifying race. She won a national titled in the 3,000-meter indoor race.
She married. She formed a nonprofit group, Brave Like Gabe, formed to raise money to fund research into rare forms of cancer. She inspired an untold number of people.
"Being brave, for me, means not giving up on the things that make me feel alive," she wrote on the Brave Like Gabe website.
But although ACC is a slow-moving form of cancer, it is relentless. Grunewald underwent various forms of treatment that kept the cancer at bay, but they couldn't stop it completely.
The grief over Grunewald's death hit hard for both Allman and Dittmar.
Allman is 32 now, married, the mother of three boys and living in Rothschild. She's struggled to explain to her young sons why she's crying.
"I tell them it hurts when you lose someone you love so hard, even if they're going to heaven," Allman said. "But I'll talk more about how brave Gabe is and was and pass that along to them."
Nothing about the way Grunewald faced cancer and mortality surprised Allman.
"She just had a way about her," Allman said. "If you look at race pictures of her, you can see it in her face. She was determined. She raced to be her best self, and that was always so amazing to see unfold on the track. ... To watch her finish, that was so beautiful."
Allman followed Grunewald's progress through her journey with cancer, even running as much as she could even though she could no longer be competitive.
Running was "the one thing she had control of," Allman said. "She knew that this was her new body, and maybe it wasn't going to feel the same. But she would run anyway. It was amazing."
Dittmar, 30, is now a photographer and documentary film producer living in Alaska. She also followed Grunewald's journey.
"I think all of us were expecting her to pull out of it, because she was so strong, so invincible," Dittmar said.
Dittmar has been "running more the last few days. I've been calling teammates, calling friends, taking nothing for granted," she said.
At the University of Minnesota, Grunewald was the clear leader on team, Dittmar said. And as a runner, Grunewald never yielded.
"She went out and she went out to do battle," Dittmar said. "She was out there to wrestle the track and bring it to the ground. It was phenomenal to see, and to be part of."
At the same time, Grunewald supported everyone.
"She loved all of us," Dittmar said. "It's a cliche thing to say, but she left everyone she touched a better person. She made us all faster, she made us all stronger."
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Contact Keith Uhlig at 715-845-0651 or kuhlig@gannett.com. Follow him at @UhligK on Twitter and Instagram or on Facebook.