On the 13 April 2014, I will be running my 4th London Marathon in as many years for Cancer Research UK, a wonderful charity that helps to save millions of lives through groundbreaking research into preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer and supporting the work of thousands of scientists, doctors and nurses across the country.

The charity means a lot to me as my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2011. Fortunately she is now in remission and things are hopefully improving but the last couple of years were worrying and upsetting times for all of the family, not least for her.

Sadly my mother isn’t the only one in the family to have fought against cancer. Other close relatives of mine have survived breast and bowel cancer while 2014 marks 30 years since my grandmother passed away from pancreatic cancer (having previously survived kidney cancer). I would have liked to have known her but I was just a month old.

By running 26 miles I hope to somehow do my bit in the fight against cancer. The pain and indignity I will experience will be nothing compared to what cancer sufferers have to go through but I hope that I can raise as much money as possible to help Cancer Research UK with their sterling work.

They carry out research into the biology of cancer cells and investigating faulty genes and they work with patients to test chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments and develop new cancer drugs. Furthermore they carry out studies to discover the risks and causes of cancer in the hope of someday finding a cure.

There are more than 200 types of cancer, each with different causes, symptoms and treatment. Around 325,000 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2010 in the UK, roughly 890 people each day. In that same year, there were nearly 160,000 deaths from cancer. I could go on forever providing statistics but the simple fact is that cancer doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, black or white, rich or poor, young or old, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or atheist, or whether you support Spurs or Arsenal, United or City. More than 1 in 3 people in the UK will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetime, depending on a number of factors. With the help of Cancer Research UK, we can lower the death rate from cancer. In the last 40 years they have helped to double survival rates, and with emerging technologies and the advance of medical science, hopefully one day a cure for all cancers could be found.

 

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