Ep. 920: From Wildland Firefighter to Cancer Fighter - Phil Decker
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2023
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Back in the day, Phil was a wildland firefighter in the Rocky Mountains, but after a major back injury, he moved back to where he grew up to plant his roots. Fast forward 20 years and Phill has been a passionate sales leader of teams of up to 600 people. Simultaneously, he has also been an athlete this whole time, most recently stepping up his running to multiple marathons a year.
However, in early 2022 after a visit to the doctor he was forced to put his years of training and motivation into place personally when he faced the biggest fight of his life: cancer.
Today we’re sitting down with Phil to hear how this diagnosis changed him, his mindset on adventure, goals, fatherhood, etc. It’s probably not what you expect.
Phil’s goal with any group is to bring awareness about colon screening to save someone’s life and to inspire individuals with examples of how he uses his foundational principles of Get Smarter, Get Fitter, and Get Better every day to battle cancer and to live his best life.
Learn more about Phil:
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast. I'm your host, Mason. Today we have a brand new episode with Phil decker phil was a wildland firefighter in the rocky mountains back in the day but suffered a major back injury and we're going to be talking about that and for a lot of people that would be the whole story uh how i found my way after breaking my back, doing what I loved. |
| 0:39.7 | And so we're going to fast forward 20 years, though. |
| 0:42.6 | And Phil has been a sales leader for a team, met someone when he was wildland firefighting. |
| 0:48.3 | They're married with kids. |
| 0:50.1 | And he has been an athlete and running this whole time. |
| 0:52.6 | But right around the age of 40, he wanted to really get back in shape. |
| 0:55.7 | He picked up running again, doing his thing, doing a great job, and just loving life, a really great time of life. |
| 1:02.4 | Kids were young, having a good time, doing all kinds of stuff, staying active. Well, one day he goes in to, for a doctor's appointment. And they were like, hey, by the way, you know, we've lowered the age that you need to get a prostate exam. |
| 1:18.0 | And he was like, okay, you know, let's go ahead and do it. |
| 1:20.2 | Well, guess what? |
| 1:21.2 | He had cancer, and it was bad. |
| 1:23.2 | And all of the sudden, this was a year ago, by the way, all of a sudden his life was flipped on its head. |
| 1:28.6 | And we're going to hear about how that last year has been, how he's been dealing with that, |
| 1:33.8 | and what the most recent news is. We do plan to hear an update from him as well about the cancer in the next week or so. |
| 1:42.5 | So if I remember, and he tells me, I'm going to share that |
| 1:45.5 | in an upcoming episode. But he's on a mission now to get other people to tell this story and to |
| 1:52.8 | share with the folks they know to make sure they get checked for cancer. Because it was just, |
| 1:58.8 | if he had not to have done that that day, I don't know if he'd be here talking to us, |
| 2:02.5 | but I love his perspective. I love how he's dealing with it. I love what he's learning through it, |
| 2:08.2 | and I'm always blown away by people who get faced with something like this. Maybe you can relate, |
| 2:13.5 | maybe you can't, maybe you will one day, I don't know. But I'm very inspired by stories like this. |
| 2:19.3 | So I cannot wait to get into this. And also, Phil is a huge fan of athletic brewing, the non-alcoholic |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Curt Linville, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Curt Linville and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.