James Allen
James's 2015 fundraising page
Fundraising for Young Lives vs Cancer
Story
Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page. I am fundraising in 2015 to support the amazing work of CLIC Sargent in providing clinical, practical and emotional support to children and young people with cancer and their families.
So far, I've run the Newport half marathon with what I thought was a PB. Except it wasn't, as the course was 600 metres short.
Then I had a bit of a drama involving underlying conditions, thermoregulatory problems and a collapse at mile 23.7 of the London marathon. Anyway, I managed to get to the finish. Slightly outside my target time of 4 hours in, er, 7 hours. I also managed to tear some ligaments on the way round so not the most successful day ever and the last few miles were very, very hard. Exertional heat stroke is no fun and is pretty scary, but is obviously pretty insignificant compared to the issues that CLIC help with.
To round off the year of running/limping/walking/collapsing I have a place in the Great North Run from Newcastle to South Shields. I haven't got anywhere near as much training done as I'd wanted, and still don't really feel back to full fitness but am looking forward to it.
A reminder of why I'm running:
10 children & young people in the UK are diagnosed with cancer every day. I know what an amazing job CLIC Sargent do because in 2012, my friend's son, William (who’s now five) became one of them.
I've been lucky enough to meet him and he’s awesome. He once beat me in a race outside a pub, but we don't talk about that and I'm not holding it against him. Anyway, I've done a lot more training since then.
He also happens to have Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL). The treatment for ALL in boys takes three and a bit years - he's now had more than 1000 days of treatment, involving several types of chemo, lots of antibiotics, weekly blood tests, monthly steroids - and recently found out his official end of treatment date is in November 2015.
William's family first met their CLIC Sargent social worker (Maria) within an hour of the confirmed diagnosis and Maria has provided a huge amount of invaluable support, advice and practical help ever since. She is always there when they need her - but all of this work needs the generosity of people like you to make it happen.
That kind of help sounds invaluable to me at a time when people need support more than ever.
To give you an idea of where your money will go, £100 pays for nearly 4 hours of a Clic Sargent nurse's time, £860 pays for a social worker for a week and £1000 can provide a family with Home from home for a month helping them to stay close to where their child is being treated.
Thank you again for taking the time to visit, and finally remember to use Gift Aid for your donation!
James