How brain cancer survivor Pip Candrick regained her lost memory through running

When Pip Candrick is about to run a long race, she tells herself not to look at how far she has to go, but how far she has come.

It's advice to mentally help her through the inevitable pain barrier of an ultramarathon, but it is also a sentiment that has particular poignancy for the 52-year-old, for she has come a long way.

Five years ago, Candrick was not a runner. In fact, the mum-of-four preferred a wine to a workout and had only ever run as far as the roundabout 500 metres from her home.

Then, in 2011, she became one of the Australians who are diagnosed with brain cancer roughly every five hours. One surgery to remove a tumour was quickly followed by a second surgery after she suffered a haemorrhage that nearly killed her.

Following a six-week stay in hospital, she joined a gym as she tried to regain her strength and health.

Asked by her trainer to set a goal, Candrick faltered. "I thought 'Oh my gosh, I've never set a goal in my life'," she recalls, but when he suggested she aim for something she didn't think she was capable of, she tentatively replied "a half marathon".

She could not have known that this seemingly insignificant revelation would change everything.

"I said 'I can't do that – I can't even run 500 metres' and he said 'you will'."

For three months she would run and walk, struggling.

"Then I started to enjoy the runs," Candrick says. "Then it was on a longer run one day that I started to get all these memory flashbacks that I didn't realise I had lost ... all this memory started coming back and it was really overwhelming because it was like a chunk of my head had been taken away and it was put back."

Suddenly realising she had lost "a whole stack of stuff" made Candrick want to run further and further to try and regain more memories; memories of her children's birthdays, their sporting achievements and her husband standing at the end of her hospital bed imploring her to fight for her life came flooding back.

In his most recent book, Dr Norman Doidge explored how exercise helps the brain to heal.

"The data is overwhelming that exercise does at least two things to the brain," Doidge told Fairfax last year. "One, that it triggers these growth factors that are kind of like fertiliser for the brain cells to enhance connections between them – one of them one called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), another is glial derived neurotrophic factor which supports the infrastructure of the brain cells and that enhances health."

As Candrick increased her physical fitness and strength, her brain and memories also gained strength.

"My life just switched," she says. "From then on in, I had a passion for it because it's healed me ... it brings me to life."

Candrick has since completed a half ironman, two 50-kilometre ultras, two 46-kilometre ultras and two marathons, one of which was particularly special.

A friend's husband had the Great Wall of China marathon and shown Candrick his Go-Pro footage. "I'd said 'why on earth would anyone want to do something so stupid?'," she chuckles.

But, when she was "really crook" in hospital, he had said they could run it together one day, when she was better.

"I said 'I'll never, ever get to do that' and he said 'yes, you will'."

When she started her journey of running, she set it as a goal, and last year they did it.

"The number on my bib was 283 – the second of August was when I had my tumour removed and three – it was three years to get me to that race," Candrick says. "It was very special."

Now, she is preparing for her biggest race yet – a 100-kilometre ultratrail run through the Blue Mountains in May. As with all her runs, Candrick has to have a running buddy and monitor her heart rate to try and stave off seizures, the result of the scar-tissue surgery left on her brain. As with all her races she will also be raising funds for Cure Brain Cancer.

She hopes that, despite the obstacles she faces when she runs and because of the obstacles she has overcome with her health, she will show other people what they too can be capable of.

"A lot of people have low self-esteem and they don't believe in themselves – they're too scared to go out and try something and put themselves out of their comfort zone," she says. "I'd love to inspire people to do stuff that they never thought they could."

She knows how capable other people are because she has seen for herself how far it is possible to come.

Initially, her doctor didn't want her to run and advised her only to walk.

"Now, I go in there and he just goes 'what's next?'"

Statistics: 90 per cent of Australians don't know about brain cancer

• Brain cancer kills more children than any other disease
• Brain cancer kills more children in Australia than any other disease

For more information about the Ultra-Trail series click here. The Pace UTA22, the 22km trail run, and Scenic World UTA951, 1.2km stair race, are still open for entries.