Cyclone Challenge, 5 Dales Sportive & Great North Run 2022

Great North Run 2022 · 11 September 2022 ·
To celebrate still being alive five years on from my cancer diagnosis I am hoping to undertake a couple of challenges this year in support of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. I have previously taken on the Great North Run in 2019, and in 2020 cycled the whole of the 2018 Tour de France route, hills and all, in my kitchen while shielding.
I am part of an ongoing immunotherapy trial at the Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre that I started on 4 years ago having been told in January 2018, after 2 rounds of chemotherapy, I had a 50% chance of surviving for another 12 months.
For the first challenge, taking place almost 5 years to the day I received my initial diagnosis, on the 7th of May some friends and I took on the 5 Dales Sportive, a single day ride round the dales of Yorkshire.
After two rounds of covid this year my training was somewhat disrupted, but I still managed 87miles/140km with more than 8700ft/2650m of climbing: this was always going to be a test of stamina and endurance. This was significantly further and with more climbing than I had ever ridden in a single ride. The scenery was beautiful and the hills hard, but it was a very rewarding experience.
Secondly, on the 25th June, I am taking part in the Cyclone Festival of Cycling, a North East institution that, like the Great North Run, I'd keep contemplating during my time living in Newcastle, but I'd never entered. This year I will be taking part for the first time, riding the 108mile/170km Black Route, tackling over 7700ft/2300m of climb.
The third challenge was a little more like unfinished business. In 2019 when I ran my first GNR & my first half marathon for 30 years I set myself a somewhat hopeful aim of making the finish in less than 2 hours. I missed by 7 1/2 minutes. I was hoping to correct that. Unfortunately I have had Covid 3 times this year which meant I was restricted in what training I could do and prioritised getting round the cycle ride thinking there would be time to train for the run between them or later on; what actually happened was that whenever I thought I’d have time to get running again I was put out of action for two weeks.I had entered the 2020 GNR but spent half the year shielding and unable to run. By the time the 2021 race I arrived I could barely run 5k, so couldn't take my place, so for 2022, and at the third attempt, I aim to be back on the start line.
A little background:
In January 2017 my father was diagnosed with stage IV kidney and bladder cancer; in March the same year my wife was diagnosed with stage I clear cell cervical cancer; two months later in May 2017 I was diagnosed with stage IV MSI-High bowel cancer with multiple metastases in the peritoneal cavity. At this stage the prognosis was that there is a 50% probability that people diagnosed with stage IV bowel cancer with two lines of chemotherapy available do not survive beyond three years, and surgery was not an option.
We made a decision early on that we would answer any questions our, at that time, four-and-a-half-year-old son had as honestly as we could, and would tell him what was going on rather than hide it from him. This was obviously a difficult decision, not least for him, but with the prognosis being what it was you can’t lie to a child and say everything’s going to be alright, because at some point soon you are likely to have to badly disappoint them.
My wife underwent surgery and radiotherapy in June 2017. My wife’s tumour was successfully removed, though she has regular monitoring to check that the remission continues. At the same time my father and I started chemotherapy; during chemotherapy I continued cycling to work when I could and for the first time in many years starting to run again because exercise is beneficial in the mitigation of treatment side-effects.
Courses of Folfiri then Folfox proved to have no effect on my tumours so in December 2017 we were back in the oncologist’s office facing the revised prognosis that with two lines of chemotherapy gone the 50% survival rate was now less than a year. The standard treatment as this point was limited to a third line chemotherapy with a limited efficacy as the cancer had shown no interest in reacting to the previous similar treatments.
The oncologist did suggest that there was an experimental Phase II immunotherapy trial that had recently been widened in scope to include the specific type of cancer I have, made available through the The Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre that might be effective, so perhaps unsurprisingly I signed up for that.
By December 2018 I’d been on the trial for nearly a year and the growth of the tumours was largely stationary; it was at this point that for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to enter the ballot for the Great North Run despite the fact I might not make it to the start line and the last time I did something like this I was a teenager. Still, I thought, I probably won’t get selected in the ballot, so it’s fine.
In September 2019, two and a half years after diagnosis, and after 18+ months of immunotherapy my tumours and I ran my first half marathon since the age of 17. In the last mile, with my legs aching and having been overtaken by a puffin, I could at least console myself that I'd never have to run another half marathon, or do anything that silly again...
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