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We are a group of enthusiastic cyclists from international law firm Trowers & Hamlins who are planning to cycle between the firm's UK offices - from Exeter to London, and then from London to Birmingham to Manchester - over 2 weekends in September.

The overall ride distance is approximately 700km / 435 miles (and probably a little longer once we've taken a few wrong turns along the way!).

The peloton varies slightly over the two weekends, but in total combines the cycling ambition of Trowers team members Tom Reynolds, Richard Fulton, Jamie Reid, Alex Burton, Emma Barnfield, Rory Stracey, Sara-Jayne Mahany, Cirklen Yu, Joe Armstrong, Katie Saunders, Dan Atkins, Dan Francis, Chris Carruthers and James Chandler. Invaluable support car assistance is being provided by Rory Stracey's family for weekend 1 and Matt Showler and his father for weekend 2.

We need your help to raise the £10,000 we are targeting to collect to support a fantastic cause, The Edward Showler Foundation.

The Edward Showler Foundation was set up in memory of Doctor Ed Showler, who died on the 11th June 2017.

Ed (the cousin of one of the firm's partners) was a gifted young doctor with an amazing career ahead of him. He had just started his specialist training in Haematology at the Royal Free Hospital in London when he was diagnosed with metastatic Clear Cell Sarcoma. Ed sadly died just 8 months later at the age of 28.

Sarcomas are a type of cancer that affects connective tissue and bone. Clear Cell Sarcoma is a rare sub-type that mainly affects young adults in their 20’s and 30’s. For patients diagnosed with Clear Cell Sarcoma the outlook is poor and there are no effective treatments.

The Edward Showler Foundation is funding a research programme into Clear Cell Sarcoma to better understand the disease and to provide new treatments for patients.

This research is being undertaken at the Cancer Institute at University College London (UCL) and is looking specifically into the genomic causes and drivers of the disease. The team at UCL have sequenced a large number of Clear Cell Sarcoma tissue samples collected from bio-banks across the UK and Europe.

Due to the success of the project, UCL have been able to leverage the funding the Foundation is providing to obtain grants from other charities and as a result the Clear Cell Sarcoma research programme now employs a team of 2 PhD students, 2 Clinical Fellows, 1 Post Doctorate Research Fellow and 3 Masters students all working under the excellent leadership of Dr Pillay.

Moving forward the team will increase their understanding of Clear Cell Sarcoma by using a range of the most up to date techniques to analyse the data that has been collected.

This analysis will lead into a drug development phase of the programme using a new class of drugs called PROTACs and by testing existing drugs to see whether they can be repurposed to treat Clear Cell Sarcoma.

This will hopefully lead to a new effective treatment path for Clear Cell Sarcoma patients.

Ed’s Foundation is seeking to initially raise £1,500,000 to fund this programme and to date we have raised nearly £900,000.

Please help us meet our target by making a donation.

For further information about the Foundation please visit https://www.edwardshowlerfoundation.com/