Hi, my name is Claire, I am a registered nurse and lecturer at Birmingham City University. August 2017, aged 33 I was diagnosed with both cervical and breast cancer despite having no symptoms, smears up to date and being otherwise fit and well. I have undergone several operations, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In addition to all of this I also found out I was BRACA2 positive along with my
younger sister Sarah. This means we have, a defective gene which increases our chance of developing breast cancer from 15% to 60-80% over our lifetime. It also increases our risk of ovarian cancer.  Not one to let this stuff get me down I decided I wanted to turn a negative into a positive! I set up #claireschallenge within the first few weeks of my diagnosis
and set friends and family the challenge of trying something new and raising lots of money for charity! 18 months later and over 50 challenges completed almost £23,000 was raised for Macmillan and Cancer Research! Details can be
found here: 

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/claireschallenge?View+your+page=View+your+page

Watching everyone achieve such incredible things made me want to be part of that too (like having cancer wasn’t enough of a challenge!!) so decided to go from #chemotomarathon
in 9 months, and Sarah and I would be both going from Mastectomy to marathon!  Sarah has now had a double mastectomy and rebuild as a preventative measure and I too have had a further preventative mastectomy since my treatment finished in September 2018. Unfortunately Sarahs
recovery did not go to plan so she had to defer her place until 2020.  

Our amazing family friend James will be taking her place instead.  Whilst James won’t have to deal with a mastectomy…..this will be a huge challenge for him too!  James only started running just over a year ago after realising his lifestyle had to change and wanting his
children to look at him as a role model.  As it turns out he was planning on concentrating on shorter distances after completing the Great North Run half-marathon last September – that was until he received my call to take
Sarah’s place!  He still adamantly refers to himself as a ‘non-runner’ but is absolutely determined to get past the finish line and loves the personal challenge this brings and can’t wait for the ‘big day’.  In fact, he is enjoying the training so much that he has entered for the Great North Run again, this time to support MacMillan – so please consider the 39.3 miles he’ll be running when you press ‘Donate Now’