As some of you may know, our (Sarah's) brilliant, cantankerous, life and soul of the party dad was recently diagnosed with an anaplastic oligodendroglioma - an inoperable, aggressive brain tumour to you and I.

It was, needless to say, utterly horrendous news but thanks to the work of incredible organisations like the Brain Tumour Charity it has turned out to be far better than it could have been. Dad had six weeks of radiotherapy in the autumn, is midway through a course of chemotherapy, and the doctors are hopeful that he will be around for a good few years yet. Given that when he was first diagnosed we thought we would be dealing with a prognosis of months, this feels pretty extraordinary.

And this is largely thanks to some very clever gene testing and highly tailored treatment - much of which wasn't even possible a decade ago. Research saves lives and all that.

The Brain Tumour Charity is behind a lot of that research, and has also been a source of invaluable support and advice to our family from day one - its guide to the different ‘flavours’ of tumour was literally handed to mum and dad in their first hospital appointment. It aims to ‘double the survival and halve the harm’ caused by brain tumours by 2025.

For a little more tugging-at-the-heartstrings context - malignant brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other kind of cancer, but receive just 1% of the national spend on cancer research. The most common type of malignant tumour in adults has a median prognosis of just 12 to 18 months.

SO. Ed and I have signed up to run more than twice as far as either of us have ever managed before, and anything you can donate to this fantastic cause would be so, so gratefully received.

(The Big Half is on March 10th and we have gleefully chosen a race with a finish line five minutes from the house, so anyone who would like to join for drinks afterwards would be very welcome too!)