The Race

Race day was a hot and sunny day – beautiful if you wanted to go for a nice relaxing walk in the park, but perhaps not so brilliant if you were just about to run 5k!  On the morning of the race, Rob took Alfie out for a bit of a walk whilst I got myself ready.  Alone with just my thoughts I showered and began to put all my pink gear on.  As I did so my mind began wandering and I felt myself getting very emotional.

My sister-in-law Sandra was a fun-loving, gregarious person and she would have leapt at the chance to dress-up, have some fun and raise some money.  In another time and space, she would have been running the race with me and the more I thought about her and about why I was running the race, the more it hit me of the big void that Sandra’s death has left in our life.  I broke down and had a cry and so was very emotional by the time we got to Moat Park.

Running the Race for Life is a revelation. Nearly every runner has a notice on their back with who they are running for and everywhere you looked were ‘Mum’ and ‘Gran’ and ‘Grandad’ and ‘my lovely friend’ and ‘my aunt’.  It was scary how many people are affected by cancer and how many people have lost one of their loved ones.

So in soaring heat we set off on the run – it was such fun!  Everyone was wearing pink and the atmosphere was so friendly.  We made our way around the course in about half-an-hour and I’m so proud and thankful to have a wonderful friend Amanda and lovely sister-in-law Jo who supported me and did the run with me. We did it!

I am racing for..

The trigger for me running the Race for Life was the death of my sister-in-law Sandra last year.  When you enter the race, you get sent a race number to pin to your front but also a big square to attach to your back where you can display who you are racing for.  It begins ‘I am racing for’ and when I looked at it, it brought tears to my eyes just thinking about how I could possibly write on it and fill it in.

The main reason for me running was to raise money in Sandra’s name and honour, but the more I thought about that blank square of paper, the more I realised that there were a number of other people who I wanted to run in memory of.  That’s when the penny dropped and I began to think about all the people I knew who had died from cancer or who had suffered from cancer.  The number was scary.

On this blog I have talked about a number of my close friends and family who have been affected by the disease but there are many others who I could name who have also been affected. Friends of friends, family of friends, colleagues at work, people I know from various social circles.

The press tell us that 1 in 3 people will be affected by cancer but this doesn’t tell the whole story.  When someone is taken ill and diagnosed with cancer, it is not just them who suffer, but it’s the people close to them, their families and friends. As the patient faces up to their diagnosis and begins to think about time off work for treatments, travel to hospitals and logistics of appointments and hospital stays, it’s their loved ones who also have a mountain to climb in caring for them, transporting them to hospital, looking after them when they are at their worst and picking them up when they are at their lowest.

When things don’t go to plan, it’s family and friends who have to stand on the sidelines unable to change anything, unable to wave a magic wand to make things right and unable to say or do anything to make things seem brighter.

So when they tell us that 1 in 3 people will be affected by cancer it’s not the true story. All of us are going to be affected by cancer in some way even if only from a distance in knowing someone who has been diagnosed.

We have to do something to treat a disease which affects so many people. There are so many types of cancer all with their own characteristics and each one is a separate disease which needs a different way of diagnosing, managing and treating it. Such good progress has been made with some of them but there are so many others which need urgent research and more money to conquer them.

Please help by sponsoring me http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint

So back to the piece of paper I need to pop on my back for the race.  I am running the Race for Life in honour and celebration of all of the following people:

• my Sister-in-law Sandra
• my Uncle David
• my Uncle Rodney
• my Uncle Michael
• my Great-Aunt Daphne
• my Great-Uncle Roy
• my cousin’s Dad, Len
• my friend John
• my friend Beverley
• my 2nd-cousin Karon
• my Great-Great Aunt Edith
• Leon Barwell, Saints ex-chairman
• Pierre & Dora Saguiez, my friend Becca’s grand-parents
• ‘Jacko’ Michael Brennan, who passed away aged 18 years old

I am also running with my Uncle Alan in my thoughts as he has been diagnosed with cancer since I began this blog and is currently fighting his own battle with the disease.  Also with Jean Adkins in my mind who is a friend of a friend and also has her own fight with cancer at the moment.

I am also running in grateful thanks for the lives of my Gran and my friend Sniffer who have both suffered but survived breast cancer.

And there are many more who I haven’t mentioned here but I run in their honour too.  Do you want to add anyone to my list?  I’m so willing to run in memory or celebration of your loved one – just message me and I’ll add them to my back to run for on the day.  All I ask in return is a minimum donation of £1 – easy at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint or by texting ‘SHAM68 £1’ to 70070

Go-on make it a nightmare for me to fit them all on….

Training Update

With a week to go until my big run, training has been a little up and down.  The good news is that Alfie no longer has stitches and is free to run with me.  The bad news is that I haven’t really managed to get out and do a proper run on my own yet.

The last couple of weeks have been great because I’ve been to Majorca with days filled with this:

and some of this..

And then my weekend has been spent in Cornwall with some old rugby-playing friends and some of this:

SO – Am I ready to run 5K and raise lots of money – heck yes!!  I may not have put in all the training I might have but I will run and finish this race to raise loads of money for Cancer research.  However, I haven’t yet reached my new target of £1500.  Was that a target too far?  I have a final week to see if I can raise another £250 so please please please sponsor me at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint

Women’s rugby

When I started playing rugby I didn’t realise how much it would change my life. I kind of imagined going training a couple of nights a week, a game at the weekend and that was about it really. However joining a ladies rugby team is SO much more than you can really begin to explain or imagine.

Rugby is the complete team game. You can’t play it on your own and you can’t get through the opposition to score without some help and support from your team mates. These team mates come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life and with diverse personalities, qualities and outlooks. Rarely will you find school teachers, nurses, scientists, students, dustbin ladies, office workers, police women, unemployed and ambulance drivers all mixing and socialising together.

When you train, play and socialise with your team something very special happens. After a while you begin to realise that the bonds forming between you and your team mates are getting stronger and your team begin to mean more and more to you so much so that they feel like family. One day on the pitch when you are in a bit of trouble and a player comes steaming in to help you realise that your team mates are now firm friends who will do anything to help you out. Suddenly you realise that you have friends for life. No matter what time passes or distance separates.

So when a team-mate of ours was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago it affected all of us. However we could only watch as she went through many horrors, starting with having to terminate the early pregnancy she had only just begun to celebrate. Treatments followed with weeks of chemotherapy and the indignity of losing her lovely red hair (would it still grow back red? Yes! Yes! Yes!) Harder still was looking after her very young son along with stopping work for the foreseeable future.

Great strides have been made in breast cancer treatment and our friend was lucky enough to benefit from this work. It’s still incredibly hard to go through the horrible months of feeling ill but there is now a light at the end of the tunnel for many breast cancer sufferers.

And the reason for this is money spent on research.

A few years on and our team-mate is a survivor. Twelve years ago her mother was not so lucky and lost her own battle with cancer. We are so thankful that research has moved on the treatments and our friend is now clear of this nasty disease. She’s still being monitored every year but so far it’s looking good and we are all over the moon for her and her cheeky young son. All we need to do now is to persuade her to play rugby again.. 🙂 You see research works, our friend is here today because of research which gave enough information on breast cancer to devise a way of treating the disease.

Please sponsor me at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint and help make this the case for all cancers.

And while you are at it why not think about getting fit, making some great new friends and changing your life? It’s easy – women’s rugby – give it a go!  Find your local club here: http://www.rfu.com/takingpart/clubfinder

My lovely Gran

My Gran was diagnosed with breast cancer over 20 years ago when I was a student away at university.  She had only lost her youngest son David to lung cancer a short while before after an extremely long battle with the disease.  She therefore didn’t go to the doctors about the lump she knew was growing and it was found by chance when she was invited for a routine mammogram.  She was extremely lucky.  She had surgery and then radio-therapy and was put on a course of drugs including the now famous tamoxifen. Thankfully she is still with us, now in her late 80’s.

Gran is a survivor. Her treatment got rid of her cancer and over twenty years later she is alive to tell the tale.  There’s only one reason for this – research! Research! RESEARCH!

Money spent on cancer research has increased our understanding of many breast cancers and its enabled those clever scientists to come up with new drugs to stop it growing and spreading.  There are new ways of operating to remove tumours and more targeted radiotherapies to get rid of any remaining cancer cells.

So many cancer sufferers are still alive today because of money spent on cancer research.  And I am SO happy that my grandmother was one of those to benefit from the generosity of people who have donated to cancer research in the past.  Without them she probably wouldn’t be here today.  So my Gran, my family and I thank those people who donated and helped to save her life.  Now you have a unique opportunity to be the heroes of the future.  Donate today and you will be helping other people to survive cancer who might not have done so otherwise.

Go on – be the lifeline to another person. Sponsor me at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint

Great Aunt & Uncle Roy and Daphne

Do you remember much from when you were very young?   I have a memory of being at my great-grandmothers house one day, which isn’t so strange as I was there nearly every day throughout my childhood.  Although I don’t remember specific details I remember it was a different day to normal and I remember a green velvet chair that I was playing with. I was only 3 years old at the time and the image is very clear and vivid so there must have been something very different about this particular day.

It’s only now that I realise that this was the day of my great-aunt’s funeral and my great-grandmother looked after us kids whilst everyone else went to the service.  Apparently I drew all over Nan’s green velvet chair with a blue felt tip…oops!

Great-Aunt Daphne died from ovarian cancer back in 1974.  Even now, ovarian cancer is notoriously late to diagnose as the symptoms can be very vague.  Once diagnosed, the chances are that the disease will progress as it needs to be caught early.  Forty years ago, my Great-Aunt wouldn’t really have stood a chance and she was in her early 40’s, my age now, when she died whilst being operated on to try to remove the cancer.

Daphne left behind my two cousins who were almost in their teens.   But this isn’t the whole the story as nine years earlier, my Great-Uncle Roy had died from lung cancer, leaving his wife Daphne to look after their two young children.  Nine years on and my two cousins had lost both their mother and father.

This is a typical story of cancer in the 1960’s and 1970’s when treatments and therapies were limited.  Treatment has come on in leaps and bounds since then and it’s all because of one thing – research.  Money spent looking at why cancer happens, how it forms, what the early symptoms are and how they can be detected.

Although lung and ovarian cancer are still hard cancers to treat, there are better therapies now than 40 years ago.  Help me to raise money to make them even better.

I’m running the race for life in memory of a number of special people and will have both Roy and Daphne in my heart and thoughts as I run.  Although I never knew them personally, I know the effect that their deaths had on their children, their parents and the rest of the family.

Please sponsor me at: https://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint/

 

Training update – woods

On our next training attempt I decided to give the bypass a miss and go for a field and woodland jog. Aware that ‘the rabbit path’ would be a little tricky I figured the woods could be the answer to our problems so Alf didn’t get bored and we could run with few distractions.

That morning it had tippled down overnight so it was a little muddy underfoot. All was well and pretty smooth going. We chased a few rabbits and only a few times did I have to pull the boy back.  Then we got into the woods where I learnt a few things;

1. Alfie isn’t too keen on running uphill in the woods. Just when I was hoping and relying on him helping to pull me upwards he decided to go plod behind me. So not only was it really hard work running uphill in the mud but I was part pulling my dog up too.

2. Alfie is very keen on running downhill in the woods. So there I am slipping and sliding at top speed being tugged downhill shouting ‘wait’ at the top of my voice and pulling backwards on the lead as much as I can. It’s pure luck that I managed to stay on my feet.

3.  Being attached to you dog isn’t always such a good thing. Alfie met a German Shepherd dog at one point and got quite excited. We ran around the corner and it was then quite steep downhill and as we were flying down I realised too late there was a fallen tree across the path. As Alfie leapt over it, the lead briefly took the strain before pulling sharply at my waist belt and I had no choice but to launch myself in the air and also hurdle the tree, at speed.

The race for life is going to be a doddle after this..

Training update – bypass

My training partner isn’t allowed to run for fear of splitting his stitches but I figured that quite frankly, no matter how fast I run, I really am no match for a lurcher. So whilst I would jog and sweat and pant, Alfie would hardly miss a beat and just trot beside me. That was the theory anyway..

So off we went the other morning up the bypass. The trouble is poor Alfie is going a bit stir crazy with just lead walks so as soon as I started running, he started running, very fast! So instead of a nice calm jog I found myself being pulled all over the place and spent most of it pulling him back and shouting ‘wait’ and ‘settle down’ which was all rather hard work. The final straw was at the end of the bypass when we turned around to come back and Alf looked at me in disgust as if to say ‘boring’ and decided to jump up, scratch my arm in the process and bite and pull his lead. I ended up walking him to heel for a while to calm him down before I could set off again.

So that wasn’t the most successful training run in the world..

Uncle David

Uncle David was my mum’s younger brother and to say he was a character is an understatement.  He was an artist and some people believe that creative people live in a slightly different world to the rest of us and this very well could have been the case!  Uncle David was a cheeky chap who didn’t seem to have a care in the world and could use his smile and charisma to charm his way with people.  He lived life to the full and after  getting his degree in Manchester, relocated up there living with a number of friends.  When he returned to our small town he would reappear in a flashy car or wearing top of the range fashion – completely alien to Buckinghamshire but suiting him and his big character down to the ground. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer he was in a happy place in his life living up North with friends and in a regular job and living a life full of fun, mischief, nights out and socials.

Lung cancer is a tricky cancer to treat and although progress has been made in treatments over the last 10 years, it’s still difficult to treat and the prognosis isn’t always great.  Uncle David went through quite a few rounds of nasty treatment but had some wonderful friends up North who nursed him and looked after him through this time. He was lucky to live near to the brilliant Christie Foundation in Manchester, who undertake pioneering cancer research and put their findings into patient trials and Uncle David became a guinea pig on one such study which involved Interferon treatments.

As his disease progressed it became clearer that he wasn’t getting better and I remember him coming back home to Stony Stratford to see everyone.  It wasn’t spoken as he played down his illness but we could see afterwards that this was his goodbye and was the last time he came back to Bucks.

Uncle David lost his battle with cancer. He was just 37 years old.  His legacy was the information gained by The Christie Hospital from him, his cancer and his reactions to the drug trial.  We like to think that this has helped other lung cancer patients to receive better treatments and perhaps survive longer because of what Uncle David did.

This sort of research works – but it costs money!  And that’s why we need MORE to fund similar research and trials such as that which Uncle David took part in.  Your money makes a difference – yes it really does!

Please help us to help more cancer patients and sponsor me at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/onepint

Smashed it! Thank you so much..

I am over the moon to announce that my grand total of sponsorship, donations and pledges has added up to a massive…

£1047!!

We broke the £1000 barrier!!

Thank you so much for your love and support, I am completely humbled by the generosity of my wonderful family, friends and colleagues. I have tears in my eyes writing this post as I really am overwhelmed by the amount of money raised and it means so much to me to be raising it in memory and celebration of my sister-in-law Sandra, along with many other special people.

But I haven’t finished yet – there is still a month to the race so plenty of time to raise more!!

But for the time being just thank you, thank you, thank you.