Of good causes and achievement.

Yesterday, I achieved the unthinkable.
For me anyway. Most people who know be will be fully aware that I am not a sporty person. I am also incredibly unfit. I can't run 30 metres to the train station from my house without feeling like I'm going to have an athsma attack. And I don't ever suffer from athsma.
However, yesterday, through a mixture of walking, jogging and even some running, I, er, travelled five kilometres on foot in only fourty minutes. And why did I undergo such an insane task?

Hayley, myself and Emma, pre-run.

The answer is, for the prevention of cancer. This was the Race for Life, where you get people to sponsor you to run, jog or walk for five kilometres and all the money is given to Cancer Research UK. It's an all-woman event, but it'll raise money to fund research into all types of cancer. 

We were each given an number to stick on our front, and also a label for your back. On this label, you could write the names of specific people that you were racing for.

That was a strange experience. There were over three thousand people there, and on their backs were the names of all the people they knew who had died of or are suffering from the disease. Some of them had whole lists of people, some just a few, and some had summed it up be writing "the 1 in 3" or something along those lines. That got me thinking. Cancer affects so many people, I knew that already, but this kind of put everything in perspective for me. There's musicians that I've already mentioned on here, Dio, McLaren, and Andrew Lloyd Webber is also living with the disease. And then it's affected me too - an English teacher at my school passed away from the disease when I was in year ten, and so did my grandmother in 2006. Her's was the name I put on my label.

So, I feel like I've really achieved something, and at the same time I know that it's not a purely selfish feat, and it is going to help other people everywhere. Now I just need all my friends to pay up!

Just to lighten the mood a bit, today's music is the somewhat amusing sight of Tarot back in the eighties. Marco looks like he's wearing a poodle on his head!

Peace&Love