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My Nan, Mary Taylor was one of the founders of the Wolverhampton Branch of the Cancer Research Campaign back in the 1950’s. She was also one of the first volunteers at Compton and spent over 25 years dedicating her life to supporting Compton and the people and families that found themselves in need of their care. 

Fittingly, Nan came back to Compton in March of this year, where she spent her last few days before being reunited with husband, John at the grand old age of 104 years old.

It is incredibly poignant that Mary’s long, full and extraordinary life would come to its final close in a way that was fitting to the life she had led.

This has driven us to want to fundraise, in the spirit of Mary and to be able to just give back as a way of saying thank you..

Mary would have been 105 years old on June 28th 2020. We have decided to honour those years in miles. My best friend Leanne Alston and I will be running 105 miles during the month of June to honour her 105 years. 

Leanne and I are both keen runners and ran the Virgin London Marathon together in 2017. Leanne lives in Yorkshire so we will be tracking our miles through the Strava app and will try to run some distances together, despite being in different counties. 

Whilst we are both keen runners, it will still be a challenge to run 105 miles in one month. We have not run that distance even when marathon training, so it will require a large element of dedication and motivation.

My husband, Will Smith will be cycling, however, as a keen cyclist already, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge for him to cycle 105 miles in a month so he has chosen to cycle 1050 miles during the month of June. Despite taking part in several Sportives, Will has never yet completed this amount of mileage in one month so definitely has a mammoth task on his hands!

On 28th June, Mary’s actual birthday, he will be cycling 105 of those 1050 miles to honour what would have been her actual birthday and COVID restrictions permitting and in accordance with Government guidelines, the route he is planning on the 28th will hopefully start and finish at Compton.

Our fundraising target will be to raise £1050 for Compton Care. I am sure Mary will be very proud as we move forward to raise money to support this fantastic cause that is so dear to her heart. We felt it very fitting to use her 105 fabulous years to set our milestones, both physically and financially. 

We are very excited to take part in ‘Mary’s 105 Compton Challenge’ and with each pedal turn and trainer clad step, we can remember her and pay tribute to her extraordinary life.   

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