Who am I? Who is Tom? Why am I doing this?

I’m Tom Smith’s cousin and I grew up with Zoë, Tom’s wife, and Clodie, Tom’s sister-in-law.

Tom Smith is a former Scotland and British Lions Rugby player. He won 61 caps for Scotland and was recently inducted into the Hall of Fame at Murrayfield. The BBC has described Tom as the greatest Scotland rugby player of the professional era.

At Tom and Zoë’s wedding in 1999 I was an awkward teenager; fast forward a few hours and by the end of the night I was downing pints with members of the Scotland Ruby team and my claim to fame is - I wasn’t sick!

I was in awe of Tom being a professional Rugby player and tried not to bore my friends with “I know him!” analogies but I’m pretty sure they all got bored of it.

23 years later, I’m 37 and I have 2 young kids of my own. My eldest Natalie’s hero in Life is Zoë & Tom’s daughter, Amelie, and her favourite thing to do is watch videos of Amelie singing on social media. When we stayed with them in France, Amelie played her guitar while Natalie sat next to her in amazement. Ever since then, Natalie has asked for an older sister and we have had to explain the difficulties in this with her being our eldest. Meanwhile Zoë, Tom, Clodie, Lisa and I sampled what felt like every red wine in the house. The sampling went on into the small hours.

In recent times Tom has been suffering with cancer and the whole family has felt helpless and useless especially with Lockdowns restricting travel movement so we couldn’t even go and see them.

During the same time my Mum & Dad have both been diagnosed with cancer, and Zoë & Clodie’s Dad, who was suffering from prostate cancer, caught Covid and died.

Many years ago, Zoe & Clodie’s Mum, my Auntie, died of cancer.

Before I was born, my grandmother died of cancer.

This Run is for Tom and everyone else who is suffering or who has suffered with this awful disease.

So, I will be running a total 1,130km in the 39 weeks left until Christmas. This is the distance from my home in Woking to Tom’s house near Bordeaux. That’s 30km a week, 120km a month, or just under 3 Marathons a month. I will not be doing this all-in-one hit. The plan is one 5km, one 10km after/before work and then a 15km run at the weekends. Finding the time for this won’t be easy; running my own business and then coming home to take kids to swimming lessons, karate lessons and the general day to day life chores. But with the support of my wife Lisa, daughters Natalie and Isla and the whole family it will be possible.

The Charities I’m supporting are 40tude and Cancer Research UK. 40tude is a colon cancer charity for which Tom is an ambassador.

I thank you for any support you’re able to give us.

Please feel free to join me, for a little or a lot, in the style of Forrest Gump…. I just felt like running!

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