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In the middle of September I cycled the Cent Cols Challenge in the alps. Have a look at the route on the website (www.centcolschallenge.com). Over 10days, I covered 2061km and climbed 40,600m of vertical ascent in a total cycling time of just under 82hrs.

The ride had its ups and downs(!) the main highlights being every descent, climbing 1600m up the Ventoux after breakfast on day 8 and being met by my brother with eggs at the top, and the huge amount of support my team provided to me over the last 650miles as I cycled in pain from an achilles injury.

I wanted to use this personal challenge to raise some money for the fantastic research work that is heavily funded by Leukaemia Research, which covers all blood borne cancers - including acute and chronic leukaemias, lymphomas and myeloma. I completed the ride motivated by the fact that many others suffer far more - at the end of the ride I knew I would recover and the pain would stop.

I have friends and colleagues in remission from Lymphoma, my stepmother is currently benefiting from the cutting edge of multiple myeloma research, I have friends and colleagues whose young children have leukaemia and a friend, colleague and annoyingly good squash partner (always beating me despite being 10yrs older, asthmatic and diabetic) became critically unwell and then died when he acutely and catastrophically relapsed from his remission of acute myeloid leukaemia. I had to resuscitate, stabilise and transfer him to another hospital as I was the clinician caring for him initially.

The blood borne cancers are the commonest cause of death from cancer for people under the age of 35, but can affect people of any age. There are nearly 25,000 new cases each year and almost all of the research into these diseases is supported by voluntary donations. In the two decades that I have been practicing medicine, the benefit of this research has been enormous, with more and more children and adults achieving remission for longer and longer periods. Please help to keep this research and its evident benefits funded.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.