"It gets dark. And when it feels like it's never going to be okay again, I want to tell people it's going to be."
Meet Dr. Clark Gamblin: a surgical oncologist and cancer survivor raising awareness for men's health and testicular cancer by running 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days.
Whether working with his patients, training along the lakefront, or running his marathons, Dr. Gamblin needs shoes to support him every step of the way.
That's where we come in. Because at Goodmiles, we believe that every mile can be a goodmile.
Introduce yourself:
Dr. Gamblin: My name is Clark Gamblin, I'm a cancer surgeon here in Milwaukee. I’ve been here in Milwaukee for about 15 years and have been practicing surgery for about 20 years.
Talk about your own cancer journey, how did you persevere and what advice can you give others?
Dr. Gamblin: You can imagine as a cancer surgeon, you give 20 years of advice to patients, so it was a big shock to me when I was in my late forties that I discovered a lump that I thought was nothing. I realized I had developed testicular cancer.
If you feel like something's not right in your health, you need to check it out and you need to be plugged into your medical community. There are a lot of cancers out there that are incredibly treatable and curable if they're caught early. So I think that's one of the messages that not only have I delivered to people, but that I had to actually live out in my cancer journey.
Why do you love HOKA?
Dr. Gamblin: I got introduced to HOKA about six years ago when I was in New York City. I remember distinctly buying my first pair then running a subsequent marathon a couple of months later.
A couple of things really appealed to me about them. One, they were really light on my feet and really comfortable, but also they had a really wide toe box so it didn't really constrain my forefoot at all. So it just really gave my forefoot some comfort that I hadn't found in other shoes. And durability, You know, I really put a lot of miles on the shoes as I'm training for these marathons, and I've just really enjoyed the shoes as far as the comfort and the lightweight elements of it.
What is the World Marathon Challenge?
Dr. Gamblin: So the World Marathon Challenge is a very unique race.
It's 60 runners. There are 17 Americans. And we're going to run a marathon each day for seven consecutive days on the seven continents. The race will begin when the gun fires in Antarctica and we run the first marathon then we will then travel the globe about 60 hours in the plane that week to run seven marathons, finishing in Miami.
To learn more about the World Marathon Challenge, click here.
What do you run for and how can people support you?
Dr. Gamblin: We are going to try to raise $250,000 for the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation, and that is to educate the public about a cancer that will occur once in every 250 men in our country. But this is the mission of kind of what we're doing in the world. Marathon challenge is our opportunity to do that.
To support Dr. Gamblin’s fundraising efforts, click here.
What is a Goodmile to you?
Dr. Gamblin: A goodmile is a mile that we've run that we're not thinking about the running. It's free of the running. The running is the mechanism that got us moving. But it's not effort. It's not painful, it's not stressful, it's fluid. And it's an ability to escape from the running.
Shop Dr. Clark Gamblin’s favorite HOKA style here at Goodmiles!
