I’m George, I’m 45 years old and from Sydney. I work as a Senior Officer in Finance Operations but I’ve always had a passion for fitness. From a young age, I played tennis but in 2010 I turned my attention to running and since then I have completed 27 marathons and countless other races.
In 2018, my mum passed away from Bowel Cancer and in 2021 I also lost my dad to Lymphoma Cancer. It was the week of my dad’s funeral and I had been reflecting on the fact that cancer had claimed the lives of both of my parents. I decided that I wanted to honour their memory and raise money to help cure this disease.
Long distance running has always been an outlet for me, a great way to process my thoughts and feelings. So, I decided I would combine my two passions - running and raising money for cancer research.
The day after my dad's funeral, I came up with the crazy idea to add the ages of my parents together to come up with 156km. I created my fundraising page for Cure Cancer, set my goal, and off I went the next morning!
Running such a long distance was hard, but I never thought about giving up. I knew I was running for my parents and that was enough motivation to keep going. Plus, I could see all the generous donations and support coming through and it kept me inspired.
I wasn’t just running for me, I was running for everyone who was supporting me and the friends and family who had also been affected by cancer.
I had so much support from my friends, some of whom even joined me for a run or walk which was amazing for morale.
By the end of Day 2, my feet were aching like they never had before but I continued late into the night to make up the distance.
When I completed the whole 156km on that Tuesday morning, the feeling was indescribable. It was a completely different feeling from any other run I had done before. This time I was running with a team, we were in it together and I felt happy that people could also get joy from the run and see what we had accomplished.
I wanted to raise money for Cure Cancer as it’s a charity that is dedicated to finding a cure through cancer research. I’ve seen how important it is to be able to treat cancer as early as possible.
It’s only with funding and support that emerging cancer researchers have the tools to conduct their research which lead to breakthroughs in finding a cure or effective treatments.
