I met Richard on the day we arrived at Luton University, we were each other’s first ever housemates. He was Luton’s biggest Top Man fan and had a penchant for pop music, while I had black hair, black clothes and a taste in dark music. Polly and I met two days later. Our music and dress sense was much more aligned, but it turns out we both thought the other was quite scary. We quickly learnt that our barks are much worse than our bites! Twenty years on, all of us are still the firmest of friends.

In November 2012, on her birthday, Richard’s Mum was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In April last year, Polly’s Mum received the same diagnosis. It wasn’t her birthday but it was just a few weeks before her daughter Zoe’s wedding and shortly after she’d moved house to be close to Polly and her family.

All cancer is cruel, but pancreatic cancer is especially nasty. It has the lowest survival rate of the most common causes of cancer and just 4% of those diagnosed survive for more than five years. Despite this, pancreatic cancer receives just 1% of the total money spent on cancer research.

I applied for my marathon place with Pancreatic Cancer UK on the 1st October. It was the day after Polly’s Mum’s funeral. The automatic reply said they’d let me know by 1st November. That turned out to be the day of Richard’s Mum’s funeral.

For Richard and Polly that was a terribly short amount of time they had left with their Mums, but for others the time is even shorter. In summer 2011 my sister-in-law Julie and her sister Kerry had just two weeks and two days with their Dad after his diagnosis. The reality of pancreatic cancer is that very often the lives of families are changed forever, with virtually no time to prepare.

Pancreatic Cancer UK wants to double the five-year survival rates by 2016, so we are going to help them do it - my feet, your support (moral and monetary, if you're able). For every £100 we raise together, another day of research gets paid for.