As ultra runners we tend to spend a great deal of time outdoors whether training or racing.
We need to be very much aware of what we can be susceptible to as we enjoy the freedom of running (or walking, hiking, strolling, etc) through the great outdoors.
100km Association member Harry Townsend has good (and very sad) cause to promote melanoma awareness. Harry’s story first appeared in the Mercury (the 100km Association newsletter) in 2008:
MELANOMA: ONE OF THE DISEASES OF THE 21st CENTURY
“Melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer, which generally starts from a mole that is changing quite rapidly anywhere on the body. After all, Bob Marley died from a melanoma under the nail on the big toe of his right foot!
So if you have a mole that’s ‘doing things': enlarging, changing color (especially black or mottled), thickening, ragged outlines etc., then go to the doctor. NOW. Not tomorrow: NOW, and you might just have saved your life.
It’s one of the diseases that particularly affects people with an outdoor lifestyle: runners, walkers, swimmers, gardeners etc. It affected 1 in 1,500 in the 1930s: now it affects 1 in 50, and unless diagnosed early there is a very high death rate, up to 25%.
It’s also the most common cancer amongst young people: sun beds and package holidays share much of the blame for this!
Lots of ultra runners might remember myself and my wife Myfanwy: we organised the 80 mile South Downs Way Run from it’s inception until it’s demise sixteen years later, and I also formed the TRA (Trail Runners Association) with John Foden, and became first Chairman.
Plants (I was Assistant Curator of Kew Gardens for fourteen years) and rugby (I coached and managed tours to New Zealand (four), South Africa (two), Australia, Fiji etc.) as well as low level marathon running shared my life with my family.
After Myfanwy died from melanoma in 1999, myself and our three sons formed a Charity in her name, the Myfanwy Townsend Melanoma Research Fund www.melanoma-fund.co.uk to raise awareness, enable early diagnosis and fund research to find a cure.
I did lots of ‘Challenges’ to get publicity for what we were doing:
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•Myself and son Cameron (who was in the US team in the World Duathlon championships in Italy) climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with brother in law Peter Clarke,
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•then I ran the Death Valley Marathon,
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•trekked non-stop across the Grand Canyon from rim to rim in 2002,
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•walked the Pilgrim Trail to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain (500 miles, 38 days) and wrote a book about it, “The Slowest Pilgrim”;
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•walked end to end of the north island of New Zealand (800 miles, 68 days) pushing my wheelbarrow and raised a Wheelbarrow Full of Money which was the catalyst for the formation of the Melanoma Foundation of New Zealand;
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•and completed the 5 day 100km of the Sahara race to celebrate my 70th birthday (the ‘softies version’ of the Marathon des Sables);
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•‘rowed’ a marathon on a rowing machine;
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•and so on.
Lots of people have come on board to help and organize fundraising events: you can read about this on the website under Donations. So many inspiring and yet often infinitely sad stories.
Leeds United are major supporters: one of their coaches, Bruce Craven, died from melanoma aged only 32, and they brought out our lime green wristbands with the wording MELANOMA AWARENESS www.melanoma-fund.co.uk obtainable from me [email protected] , like packets of seeds of sweet pea Myfanwy Townsend and the sunflower The Darker Side of the Sun. There is also available a nice white running T shirts with the logo and watchword The Darker Side of the Sun
We organize national Melanoma Awareness Week every year – do watch out for it – our supporters bombard the media at every level!
What have we achieved?
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•we’ve set up and equipped a research laboratory,
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•and funded the initial appointment of a specialist skin cancer nurse:
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•this past year we raised more than £100,000, and we’re helping to fund a research project at the Royal Marsden and Cancer Research, as well as work on more effective sun screen creams.
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•We’re producing a DVD covering the skin cancer element of the GCSE Science curriculum, which will soon be freely downloadable from our website:
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•and we’ll launch our first Mobile Mole Awareness Unit which will tour schools, beaches, shopping centres and festivals in the West Country and which will cost us an initial £45,000 or so. The local PCT will add a similar amount: and we hope that further such units will be launched elsewhere soon.
So we’ve done a lot so far: but there’s far more to do! That’s why we need more and more people on board to help: and if anybody reading this would like to be involved, on no matter how small a scale, I’d be delighted to hear from them.”
Harry Townsend
From Multidays.com, post Melanoma – What You Need To Know
