Memory Miles - anyone who donates over £20 can nominate a memory mile which I will print on my Scotland flag and hope to do a video with each name shouted out at each mile. So far taken are miles 1, 6, 16 and the finish so please pop your persons name and which mile you would like in the comments 🥰

In November 2018 I started my Abbott World Marathon Major journey with the New York marathon! I woke that morning to the message that my friend and colleague Ann had passed away with a Glioblastoma brain tumour. Thankfully before I flew to New York, my colleagues and I all visited Ann at home to say our goodbyes. It was a very emotional day!

Fast forward 7 years and I have managed to complete a further 4 of the big 6 with Berlin in 2019, London in 2021 (post COVID), Chicago in 2023 and Tokyo 2024.

Sadly I am not the fastest runner so qualifying for Boston wasn’t something I have been able to manage. Along comes Glenn and the team at Brain Power who have given me the most amazing opportunity to run Boston Marathon 2025 and complete my 6-star journey. I feel it was fate which saw me start this journey with the loss of Ann to a brain tumour and here I am completing it, helping to raise vital funds to create a Scotland Brain Tumour research centre!

I plan to do lot of different things to help reach my target such as memory miles, Lucky Squares, corporate sponsorship, a possible February fitness challenge as well as donating £1 of my own money per mile I run per month (which by marathon day will be close to £500 alone) plus other things in the pipeline so please keep me in mind if you have any events you need a charity for!

According to Cancer Research UK:

* only 4 in 10 of those diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour survive for a year or more

* fewer than 2 in 10 make it beyond 5 years

Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under the age of 40, according to both the Brain Tumour Charity and Brain Tumour Research.

These grim statistics need to change. That’s why I have started Brain Power - a fundraising community to fight back against brain tumours.

The basic idea is that the more scientific brain power we can train on this problem, the more likely the experts are to make breakthroughs in treatment and their search for a cure.

Funds raised by our Brain Power Team are being donated to Brain Tumour Research for the purpose of establishing a Scottish Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence.

The proposed new centre will bring together scientists from the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and help them scale up their research and progress promising new therapies into clinical trials.

The Scottish centre will form part of a UK wide network with existing centres in London, Surrey and Plymouth.

If you would like to give the brain tumour patients of tomorrow faster diagnosis, better treatment and longer lives - please make a donation or join our fundraising family.

Your support is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Gemma ❤️ 🧠

Notes:

The Cancer Research UK data is published here:

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/brain-tumours/survival

Those figures for England are similar to those published by Public Health Scotland.

https://www.isdscotland.org/health-topics/cancer/cancer-statistics/brain-and-central-nervous-system/#ssnmbcnst

You can find out more about the work of The Brain Tumour Charity and Brain Tumour Research through the links below:

https://www.thebraintumourcharity.org/

https://braintumourresearch.org/