Diane Van Deren runs seizures away

MANILA, Philippines - Endurance athlete and ultra-runner on a mission — that’s none other than Diane Van Deren, who recently competed in The North Face  (TNF) 100-km. run in Baguio.

But more than being such a super athlete, what makes Van Deren so amazing is that she has had to live with a brain operation and seizures while accomplishing her feats as a runner.

The seizures started when she was pregnant with her third child. It was explained to her that the seizures were caused by scar tissue in her brain, which began triggering frightening and debilitating seizures. For 10 years, she had to cope and manage the seizures with limited success until she took the radical step of having a kiwi-size part of her right temporal lobe removed.

“When I started developing seizures when I was pregnant with my third child, it was very scary,” shares Van Deren.  “We were trying medications, yet none of them were controlling my seizures.”

So even as the athletic Van Deren continued coaching kids and working out, she was constantly afraid about when the next seizure might occur. “I lived life with the fear of the unknown.”

Run, Diane, run

Van Deren lives on a ranch in Colorado and it is there that she found the cure for her fear of seizures.

“I remember when my kids where still little, I was out walking the dog and was miles from the house,” she said.  “I had a sensation like I was going to have a seizure and it scared me. I remember I started running to the house and when I was running, the sensation of a seizure coming on ceased.”

It was then that Van Deren realized that perhaps running might be the cure for her seizures — or at least a way for her to “run” away from them. 

The run that day with the dog got Van Deren to thinking that maybe running would stop the seizures. “From that time on, I found that when I had a fear that a seizure was coming on, I would draw my running shoes and I would go and run to the mountains,” Van Deren quipped.  “My love of ultra running came from the running from a seizure. I remember being in the mountains and my anxiety would just disappear. I would just feel my footsteps and it became very peaceful and I didn’t seize.”

Van Deren said that running is always her peaceful moment, her safe spot.  She added that she is more fearful when she is in the mall because there is no place to run and there are so many people.  But out in the mountains, running and listening to her footsteps brings about a peace like no other.

Even though Van Deren would combat her epilepsy by strapping on her running shoes and heading towards the mountains, she would often have four or five seizures a week. She learned that life must be lived in small doses — similar to the way she runs a race. She breaks up her 100-kilometer races into digestible pieces.

Diane’s message is “don’t think about what you can’t do, but what you can do.”

It is this message that she brought to the kids in a camp in Colorado who were suffering from epilepsy.  Van Deren visited the camp after she completed her first 100-mile run in Colorado.

Van Deren knew that she had to do the run to prove to herself, her family and her doctors that she was capable of doing it and that the seizures could no longer take control of her after she had her lobectomy. 

“When I signed up for my first 100-mile run, I said I wanted to know what it’s like to go that far,” she said.   “Everyone was nervous because I was going to run all night and all day nonstop. I ran for 28 hours in the mountains.  When I saw the finish line, I said, ‘Ahhhh, I did it.’ I placed fourth.”

Only the beginning

When Van Deren went to the camp for kids with epilepsy, she was very sore. The camp had 30 kids with severe epilepsy, and each would suffer from one to 30 seizures a day.

“I remember talking to these kids and telling them to run their life with epilepsy; don’t let epilepsy run your life,” said Van Deren. “No one will tell you you can’t do something. You can do everything, but you might have to do it differently from someone else.”

It was at the end of the talk that Van Deren’s running mission began.

“At the end of my talk, I told them about my race,” she said.  “The kids asked me if I would run my next race for them:  ‘And will you tell everybody we are normal? There is nothing different about us.’” 

Van Deren made the commitment to run for the kids and to get the message across that epileptic kids are normal, just like us.  She promised the kids that she would get their story on the national news.

Four years and 25 100-km. runs later, Van Deren was indeed able to get on the national news.

The feat was not easy. She ran race after race after race, getting better with each race. Yet she kept her seizure history a secret.

“I was up for female Everest trail runner of the year in 2008 when I learned that one of the kids I had worked with died of a seizure,” Van Deren said.  “He was 10 years old. When I went on stage to receive my award, that was when my story came out, because I dedicated that trophy to the 10-year-old.”

Ultimate runner

Just how successful is Van Deren?

Well, her accomplishments include being the overall winner of the 2008 Arctic Ultra 300-mile race while towing her own 45-pound sled across the frozen tundra in subzero temperatures. She is also the first woman to finish the 430-mile Yukon Arctic Ultra race. In January 2010, researchers at Mayo Clinic followed Diane as she climbed Aconcaqua in Argentina — her first mountaineering summit — and proclaimed the about-to-turn-50 Diane’s peak aerobic capacity as better than normal for a 20-year-old. 

Her latest feat was the almost 1,000-mile Mountain-to-Sea (MST) record, traversing the entire state of North Carolina in 22 days, five hours and three minutes, surpassing the previous record of 24 days, three hours and five minutes.

And, just four days before she ran TNF 100 in Baguio, Van Deren ran the 100K race in Taiwan, which she completed in 10 hours and 12 minutes. 

A first-time visitor to the Philippines, Van Deren said the TNF 100KM Ultra Marathon in Baguio-Benguet was one of the toughest races she has done. The assaults or uphill runs were a killer. She said that she had a hard time navigating in the dark partly due to her previous brain surgery. In Baguio, Van Deren slipped and broke her trekking pole at around the 25K mark, where she sustained minor wounds and gashes. Another The North Face athlete, Tess Bitbit, lent Van Deren her trekking pole set, proof that aside from the athleticism of these elite runners, sportsmanship and camaraderie run strong.

Injuries and unfamiliar territory did not deter her from finishing strong, clocking in at 22:17:07. Van Deren placed 2nd in the Women’s 100K category and 22nd overall.

“I treat each race as my first, even though I have been doing this for 14 years,” said Van Deren. “And I don’t ever go into a race going, ‘I got it.’ My number-one goal always in every race is to start and to finish.” 

When North Face asked Van Deren if she wanted to race in Taiwan and the Philippines — since she had never been to the Philippines — she said yes. 

“Aside from the huge shopping malls, I love the warmth and friendliness of the Filipinos,” said van Deren about her experience here. “The trails of Baguio-Benguet are amazing and I can’t wait to go back and explore more of this wonderful country.”