He decided he wanted to live his life for himself and no longer please other people and he embarked on what he describes as a self-empowerment journey. He took his two young children, left his toxic marriage, set goals for himself, and nine months later had stopped smoking, started running, and completed his first Ironman Triathlon.

During this new stage of his life, he received a call from his sister June who told him that she had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Not long afterward, June lost her fight again cancer. Three days after she passed away, he ran for 24 hours straight at the American Cancer Society 24-hour Relay For Life and brought his 9-year old children along who each ran 31 miles that day.

To work through his trauma from his sister’s passing David decided to write his book Cycle Of Lives: 15 stories, 5000 miles, and A Journey Through The Emotional Chaos of Cancer about how people talk about and process cancer. He found that the loss around cancer seems to be a unique kind of grief and that people who believe their stories are nothing more than ordinary are actually the most extraordinary.

An entrepreneur, author, public speaker, athlete, and philanthropist, David Richman uses the lessons learned in his life to enrich and inspire others. As a former sedentary, over-weight, smoker, David knew that he needed to focus not on what others wanted out of him, but on what he wanted out of life. With his first book, Winning in the Middle of the Pack, David discussed how to get more out of ourselves than ever imagined. Now, David shares the interconnected stories of others overcoming obstacles—specifically cancer—in his second book Cycle of Lives.