I am running the London Marathon 2026 to support Prostate Cancer Research in memory of my grandfather.

Můj děda, Tomas Riha, was a remarkable man — an economics professor, adventurer, and principled Czech intellectual and dissident. He fled Prague with my grandmother when the Russians invaded in 1968. They eventually settled in Australia. He was warm, inquisitive, and endlessly thoughtful - someone whose moral clarity shaped everyone around him.

He died of prostate cancer when I was just four years old. My memories of him are faint - fragments of laughter and soft-spoken Czech words. But the pain he went through, and the way this disease stole his final years, has stayed with my family ever since. It was an aggressive cancer and a horrible way to die. He died - far too young, when he had only just retired - within a year of diagnosis.

Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer in the UK, but treatments are often limited and can cause serious side effects. We need better options and smarter, kinder science. Prostate Cancer Research funds the kind of bold, collaborative research that can change lives - research that puts patients, not just data, at the centre of its mission.

If you can support my marathon run, I would be incredibly grateful. You will be helping to honour my grandfather's memory, support those fighting this disease today, and bring us closer to a future where better treatments are possible.

Thank you.