As many of you will know, on 18th February 2020, we tragically lost my beautiful eldest daughter, Sian. She was just 30 years old, and her loss still seems unimaginable. Despite a very brave battle with cancer for over 5 years, it finally, dreadfully, sadly took her. Sian had the severe misfortune of being afflicted with a very, very rare cancer, Clear Cell Sarcoma. CCS is incredibly rare – sarcoma’s make up 1% of cancers seen at the Royal Marsden Hospital (where Sian was very expertly treated), and CCS is just 1% of that 1% - that’s 1 in every 10,000…

CCS is – in the words of Robin Jones, a leading Sarcoma oncologist at RMH – ‘very tough’; If it can be tackled in a very localised instance (so the tumour has not spread and it can be extracted successfully), there is probably a 50/50 chance of survival. However, once its starts to metastasise, the prognosis is not good…There is no known truly effective treatment.

The Edward Showler Foundation was set up by the parents of Ed Showler, who also tragically lost his life to Clear Cell Sarcoma in 2017. The ESF are funding a 4 year research project at University College Hospital London, and which is starting to understand the disease just a little better. We live in hope, but we need more than hope. In order to keep the research going and funded we are (once again) taking on a challenge to try to raise awareness, and money for the Foundation.

The challenge team are myself, Paul Stephens (The Grandadiator) and Phil Goodman (Superannuatedman), and this tremendous trio will cycle 103 miles over just 2 days (19th-20th July). Granted, its not the Tour de France, but (1) we are a bunch of creaking 66 year olds (2) the furthest most of us have ever cycled in one day is probably 50 miles and (3) doing the same again the next day (plus 3 extra miles) will be testing…Not only that, but I am personally going to extend things even further. So, on the Friday before (18th) I will kick things off with a 15 mile exercise bike cycle (for those of you interested, it will be on the ‘Pyramids’ profile, and at mid-resistance – no cheating with ‘manual’ on 1…), and on the Monday after the main cycle (21st) I will run 10km/6 miles….after which I will need a serious lie down.

Any of you wanting to join us for part of the main cycle, we will be going east from my (and Sian’s original) base in Anstey, Hertfordshire, across into Suffolk on the Saturday, and then cycling back west on the Sunday to finish at Wimpole Hall, where the family and Sian enjoyed many happy days.

Wish me/us luck, by all means, but what we would really like you to do is make a little donation to our cause, and help try to find better treatments and care for those who are so cruelly struck by this terrible disease.

Sian was an incredibly brave, gentle, uncomplaining soul, and nothing that the 3 of us will go through for this challenge will compare by even the tiniest amount to the suffering and anguish of Sian, Ed and others like them. If you could please support us, no matter how little, we would all be very grateful.

Thank you