I'm running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in October 2023 to raise money for Alice's Arc (through Gaspard's Arc - an offshoot from Alice's Arc), a children's cancer charity dedicated to funding research into finding a cure for a rare and very aggressive form of cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma.

Alice's Arc has been and continues to be instrumental in helping Gaspard, the son of one my closest friends overcome this terrible disease.

The story:

In December 2018, just before Christmas, Gaspard, was diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma. This led him to undergo 6 intense cycles chemotherapy including having to travel 9 weeks to Florida for a proton beam radiotherapy. He then underwent a further 2 nephrostomies to drain his kidneys, a supra-pubic catheter to drain his bladder and a colostomy bag to drain his bowels for 6 months. Needless to say this little one is a Superman. But this harsh reality is what many children have to endure to fight against cancer.

Thankfully Gaspard ended his treatment in July 2020 after almost 2 years of treatment and has not been diagnosed with any relapse since.

That is only partial good news: a child relapsing from Rhabdomyosarcoma has a meagre 17% chance of survival.

Why can you make a difference?

Believe it or not: only 3 new drugs have been approved in the last 20 years to treat childhood cancers and only 4% of the all the funds collected for cancer research is going to childhood cancer research.

That's is just not enough. That's why you can help. I've been running this event as part of this team for 5 years now and we've raised over raise £100,000 which has been put to use for projects such as a new method of liquid biopsy, as well as a Car T cell trial (a new method to fight this type of cancer). We'd like to beat this target this year to give the Gaspards of the world a fighting chance