Young Lungs, Big Steps: How We Walked 50km Together

It was the wrong side of Christmas and we had just bid f*ck you to 2024 - the year I got cancer. The rain was dripping from dusty lugubrious skies and I was on a soggy walk with my dog, Bowie. I could see where the need to set a new goal came from.

In February, I had signed up to my first overseas marathon in Valencia! Before training had begun, however, in April I received the devastating diagnosis: I had lung cancer. My lungs that had breathed for me for 40 years, in dozens of countries, puffed their way around 6 marathons - had tumours in them. Running was still on my mind but my lungs were unable to carry me.

Treatment was immediate - 9 weeks of radical chemoradiation. By the time the treatment was finished in July, I could barely walk two streets to the polling booth. Covering 500 metres on foot was governed by fear, pain and breathlessness.

To balance out recovery and a prescribed immunotherapy treatment, I found a yin yoga studio, and won the postcode lottery with a NHS physical rehabilitation programme. Gradually, pain subsided, breaths became deeper and walks with Bowie became longer.

When 2025 came I needed goal was to ease the physical and emotional trauma of the past year. Walking had been my friend throughout and so I leant into that relationship. After exploring a number of walks that the UK had to offer, I found the Isle of Wight Challenge. The whole circumference of the island is 100km, but I could do half. The route was along costal paths, had 900m of elevation and a 15 hour cut off time. Doable. Potentially.

Following the advice of Kevin Costner in Fields Of Gold “build it and they will come”, I signed up. Soon beautiful friends, incredible cousins and my superhero partner Robin did too. With busy lifestyles, kids, full time jobs and some of them, little inclination for exercise, they showed up. My heart is forever with my Young Lungs team (the name we gave ourselves).

A week after signing up, I received the news I had progression on my brain, my cancer was now incurable. Somehow I continued putting one foot in front of the other. Once I recovered from gamma knife surgery, the structured training, provided by my rehabilitation programme, began. In May - a year after the first chemotherapy drug entered my veins, I crossed the start line of my first ever ultramarathon.

We reached the first stop at 15km; toenails were intact, bowels were good, lungs happy! By the half way point there were blisters, a few ‘nature’ loo stops, but vibes were 10/10. Darkness descended and we were still walking. Crossing the 50km signpost, I took my daily Osimertinib tablet - my targeted treatment that is keeping me alive! After 14 hours of walking this was quite simply the most extraordinary reminder of how remarkable this little pill is.

Holding each other up, and crossed the finish line to Black Box’s “Ride on Time” whose lyrics spoke directly to my lungs, my body and my team:

“Gotta get up, Gotta get up, gotta get up

Thank thank thank you baby

Gotta get up, Gotta get up, gotta get up

Walk right in.”

Together, we “walked right in”, achieving a bigger goal than any previous marathon. Along the way we’d raised over £14,500 for TRACERx - a study looking at overturning the resistance my cancer will eventually build up towards my miracle pill.