I would like to start this fundraiser by linking to our fundraising page from last year HERE which is where I tell the story of my cause in full detail. For the brief version, please read below.

Hi everyone,

For those of you that don't know me, my name is Aja Aguirre. In July of 2020, my family and I went through the traumatic experience of losing my 30 year old brother Xavier Aguirre to a rare disease called AL Amyloidosis. It happened very suddenly, and it has since ripped a massive hole in our hearts and in our family.

After Xavier passed away on July 16, 2020, I made a decision. I endeavoured to do a charity bike ride in his memory, cycling over 500km from Glasgow, Scotland, to Nottingham, England, where we would arrive on the one year anniversary of Xavier's death. The plan was to raise as much money and awareness as we possibly could for Amyloidosis - a largely unheard of disease which is similar to cancer but not quite the same (and in many ways, much worse. Learn more HERE and HERE). The support we received throughout this journey was incredible. Not only did we hit our fundraising target of £5,000 - we hit it in the first month of fundraising. We then doubled the target to £10,000, and by the time we completed the bike ride we had, incredibly, managed to surpass even that for a total of £11,000 raised overall.

The bike ride was a complete success, and we could not have done it without the support of the people around us and all those that donated. In the end we cycled 558km over 7 days. When we arrived in Nottingham on the one year anniversary of losing him, we spent the evening surrounded by family and friends. Instead of sitting around feeling sad and horrible like we would have, we celebrated him - which we know is what Xavier would have wanted. Not only did this bike ride help us to spread awareness about Amyloidosis across the UK, it helped us in our grieving process.

Additionally, the money that we raised got split between three leading Amyloidosis research facilities across three countries; £7,500 went to the National Amyloidosis Center in London, which is one of the top centres for this disease in the world. Next, we sent £1,800 to the Mayo Clinic in the United States, which is also one of the world's leading research facilities and who have many current ongoing studies on AL Amyloidosis. And finally, we sent £1,700 to The University of Calgary in Canada, where they do the majority of the research for Amyloidosis in Canada. This last donation was particularly important to us, because while Amyloidosis is underdiagnosed everywhere, in Canada there are even less resources for it than places like the UK and the USA. On top of that, the £1,700 (approx $3,000 CAD) that we donated went directly into a study being conducted by Dr. Victor Zepaeda which was due to start; it is a year long case study on clinical trials of treatments for Amyloidosis patients, and it consists of at least 60 current Amyloidosis patients. This brings me to the main point of this page.

After last year's success and us being able to do so much for Amyloidosis in Xavier's memory, we decided that we are going to make it into a yearly event. I am pleased to announce that this year we are going to be doing the bike ride in British Columbia, Canada, where we will cycle from Whistler to Vancouver Island - hitting a few main cities including the capital (Victoria) in the process - and then back to our hometown of Burnaby, British Columbia. We will make stops at Xavier's university (BCIT) and his highschool (Moscrop Secondary) and the ride will culminate at the house he grew up in, where we will raise a glass to him. We will be looking to cycle the same distance or more, and the ride will start on the same day (July 10th) and end on the two year anniversary (July 16th) of Xavier's death.

I am going to keep the target on this page much lower than last years. I know that it is not realistic to set it as high because we have already made it through over a year without him now and the initial support - incredible as it was - can't be expected to happen again in the same ways. That being said, we still want to raise as much money and awareness as we can. With the event being in Canada, the majority of the donations will go to the University of Calgary Amyloidosis research, and the rest will be split again between the NAC and the Mayo Clinic. So on top of this page, we will be doing lots of fundraising locally, as well as on social media in the form of raffles and events, as well as sponsorships and pledges. If you are interested in being involved in that in any way please don't hesitate to reach out to me. And be sure to keep your eyes peeled for updates on the facebook page: Journey to Amyloidosis Awareness: Xavier's Legacy, the instagram page: amyloidosis_awareness_x, and the Twitter page: AmyloidosisX

I will also be posting training updates on here and on those pages, as we did last year. To read Xavier's story in full, please click HERE

Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support. We can never bring Xavier back, but our hearts are full with the thought that through this bike ride we can help stop this happening to other families.