Serena Burla: A Unique Athlete, by Alfons Juck

Serena Burla, Second place, 2011 Aramco U.S.A. Half Marathon champs, photo by PhotoRun.net

At the press conference at the 2011 Aramco USA Half Marathon champs, Serena Burla, who took second in 2010, had just taken second in 2011. Serena, who had literally had a year from hell, was smiling and noting, ” I take each day of running as a gift.”

Burla is one of our top athletes, and what she had to overcome this past year shows us once again, the power of human spirit and how important love and support is for someone facing life’s constant challenges.

I was asked the other day, who I thought could be the big surprise for 2012 in the marathon. Serena Burla is on the short list.

Serena Burla, 2011 Aramco Houston Press Conference, photo by PhotoRun.net.

NEW YORK
(USA): New York Times writes that Dr. Patrick J. Boland, an orthopedic
oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, had
operated on many patients with sarcomas — cancers of soft tissues — but
he had never had a patient like Serena Burla, a 27-year-old elite
distance runner from St. Louis. She had a potentially deadly cancer, a
synovial sarcoma, that arose in and replaced one of the muscles in her
right hamstring. Treatment was to remove that muscle, the biceps muscle
of her hamstring.

Before he operated on Feb. 26, 2010, Boland went to
the medical literature to see if there was any other athlete who had
that hamstring muscle removed, recovered and competed again. He could
not find one, writes New York Times.

She proved it is possible. Last
November she finished 19th in 2:37:06 at NYC Marathon. Burla planned to
run in the New York City Half Marathon on Sunday, but her left hamstring
— the healthy one — hurt a bit on Friday when she was doing a training
workout on a track. She decided to pull out of the race rather than risk
aggravating it.

Serena Burla, Jenn Rhines, 2011 Aramco U.S.A. Half Marathon champs, photo by PhotoRun.net.

Author

Larry Eder

Larry Eder has had a 52-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Also does some updates for BBC Sports at key events, which he truly enjoys.

Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."

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