John Blakeley
John is fundraising for Cancer Research UK and would love your support!
Fundraising for Cancer Research UK
Story
2012 and another Christmas of eating & drinking too much I decided my New Years Resolution would be to start running and on the 6th January 2013 the journey began. From taking 35 minutes to do my first Bolton Parkrun, completing The Manchester 10km, and the Chester Half Marathon I have decided to challenge myself by entering the Manchester Marathon.
Anyone who knows me will know I'm not exactly built for distance running as I'm short & stocky and my little legs need to do twice as many steps as your average runner.
So why am I doing this?
Apart from challenging myself and the obvious sense of achievement I will get in completing the run, there is a serious side to this.
On the 4th April 1989 my father lost his battle with bowl cancer, it was his 42nd birthday, a day we should have been celebrating, but its now a day we remember for the wrong reasons. In 1999 after a fall my mum went for a routine x-ray only to find out she had a shadow on her lung. A year later at the age of 52 my mother had also passed away.
If you haven't been effected by cancer I'm sure you know someone who has and statistics show that 1 in 2 of us are diagnosed with cancer in our lifetimes and every day around 10 young people are diagnosed with cancer.
Cancer Research UK receives no Government funding for its research, relying instead on the generosity of the public to continue its life-saving work.
Your donation can help in so many ways, for example:
£2 buys a box of microscope slides, just like the ones used in breakthroughs such as the discovery of tamoxifen, which has saved the lives of many thousands of women with breast cancer across the globe.
£20 buys a lab coat, box of gloves and goggles, these vital items help scientists to carry out life-saving research.
£30 covers the cost of a clinical trial for a day to find out if radiotherapy can pack more of a punch to lung cancer cells and stop the disease coming back after surgery.
£40 buys 500 petri-dishes which allow scientists to follow a cancer cell's every move. CRUK's scientists study how cancer cells make a break for it, so that they can discover new ways to stop the disease in its tracks.
£75 buys chemical building blocks that make up a strand of DNA, to make copies of important genes that may give us clues about why things go wrong in cancer.
£100 buys a special chemical measuring tool that enables scientists to measure DNA molecules. This vital information could reveal crucial clues about how to beat cancer.
Thank you very much for your support to this fantastic cause. Your donation truly means so much to both myself personally and, of course, to Cancer Research UK. Every single penny donated is very much appreciated and Cancer Research UK relies on charitable donations to continue its life-saving work so please dig deep and support my efforts in supporting this great charity.
To put things into perspective, if all my Facebook friends gave £1 I would be over halfway to achieving my target.