Let’s face it, we are all touched one way or another by cancer eventually. I was lucky, it happened later in my life than most. My father died suddenly (6 weeks after diagnosis) of cancer in his mid-50’s (when I was 24). We as a family didn’t know what to do or where to turn, we had been very lucky – this was our first loss. Unfortunately, my father’s sister (my auntie) died a few weeks afterwards from ovarian cancer. It felt like the world was closing in and whilst we came out of the other end (I’m very close with my siblings, we share the same dark sense of humour), it would have been much easier if we didn’t have to go through it alone.

Since moving to Cheltenham in 2018, I became aware of Maggie's who are a cancer charity that helps individuals and families (and anyone else affected by the process) navigate this really difficult time. Maggie's helps with everything from counselling, benefits advice, group therapies and so much more. Had we known about Maggie's at the time, we would have been there every week. If I can help one person become aware of Maggie's or raise some money that allows other people to access the help they need, then lifting 27 Mini’s a day for 31 consecutive days, will definitely be worth it.

You might be thinking, 'What has weightlifting got to do with it?'...Well, everyone grieves differently. I had always played a lot of sport and I was lucky that I was always in quite good shape (up until my father died). After he passed, I was working quite hard in a sedentary job (at a desk), I stopped playing any sport or going to the gym and I started to eat my feelings – two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners was a pretty normal day for me. Before my father passed away, I was running quite a bit, playing some football and some rugby. I weighed around 13 stone. When my sister got married (2.5 years after he died), us three brothers shared the ‘father of the bride duties’ – one of us walker her down the aisle, one of us gave the father of the bride speech and one of us danced with her. On the day my sister got married, I weighted over 27 stone, nearly 400lbs, over 171 kilos.

I look back to photos of that day and I don’t recognise myself. I’d doubled my weight (slightly more), I was still grieving and I was very, very unhappy.

Fortunately, and don’t ask me how – I still don’t know, soon I said ‘enough is enough’. I started going to the gym, I started training with friends and I did every activity I could (running, cycling, boxing, weightlifting etc). It was the weightlifting that probably helped me through my grief the most. I love lifting really, really, really heavy weights –weights that are so heavy that I cannot focus on anything other than “Am I about to die?”. During those moments, my brain was finally quiet, I couldn’t focus on the grief, the loss, my reaction to it or blaming myself/being angry at the world.

And whilst I now weight around 15.5 stone, a lot of it is muscle. I definitely couldn’t out-run my 24 year old self, but I'd whoop his ass in a weightlifting competition. I’ve kept up the weightlifting and slowly gotten stronger and stronger at it. I view weightlifting a bit like grieving – you cant do it all at once. But if you show up regularly, apply yourself and stay focused, it gets a tiny bit easier each time. Trust the process; in 6 months’ time it will be noticeably easier, in 2 years’ time you will be much stronger. It’s a journey, just like grief, and whilst it never ends or leaves you – it does get easier.