This will be my first, and possibly only marathon.

I've always wanted to run a marathon, and since I run like I used to swim (slowly, repetitively and hoping to bore the opposition into submission), perhaps this explains the appeal.

Last year I ran the half-marathon in Vienna. The euphoria afterwards was pretty good, but I have to say that 13-16 km was not much fun. And training in an Austrian winter tends to the cold. One of the things that kept me pounding the streets when the rain, wind and snow came was that I was lucky to have the chance to choose to do this, whilst my dear friend Lucy prepared to die. The enthusiasm with which she lived could have powered a city; as it is, she has left a huge circle of family and friends around the world, who mourn, remember and embrace. 

Lucy's cancer was a particularly intransigent type, and her oncologist in the UK was Professor Andrew Tutt, whose research into triple negative breast cancer and its treatment is supported by Breast Cancer Now (Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Campaign merged last year to form www.breastcancernow.org). I want to support Andrew Tutt and the researchers of the future in their work to give women like Lucy, and their friends and families, more time to live, love, travel, laugh, share, and create; perhaps, eventually, to offer them long-term remission.

If you'd like to know a little bit more about Lucy, who was Kel's amazing wife, a sparkling daughter, an ingenious and loyal cousin, an ever-attentive friend, and was guide/god parent to the Bean, Zoo, E and our own Moodle (these are aliases, for which our kids are grateful), here's something honest written by the Bean's Dad in those brutal days after her death: https://autisticbean.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/lucy/

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