Yeovil Mason Completes Race For Life

As a family, we have been raising funds and supporting numerous charities over the last ten years, mainly through organising our own events. With the latest statistics now showing that 1 in 2 of us will develop some form of cancer in our lifetime it has visited my life far too many times over recent years where friends and family have sadly lost their battle against this dreadful disease. Sadly this is something a lot of you may relate to and empathise with.
For one of our events this year we decided to something a bit personal to raise funds in the fight against cancer, so I signed myself and my 15 year old son, James, up for the Bristol Race for Life 10k.
So having signed up in January and with the race in June I knew that we had plenty of time to shake of the Winter blues, and the post Christmas belly and get after some training. We downloaded the really useful NHS Couch to 5k app and were following that as it was really helpful. As I am away all week with work and only home at weekends it was also nice to have the time in the gym with James. All was going well, and we were getting some miles under our feet and were confident that we could put in a good time in memory of all those we had lost to cancer. Unfortunately I had a couple of medical challenges during the training, which put me back a lot, however decided to guts it out.
On the day of the race we parked up and made our way to the course start to see hundreds of other volunteers all there with the same purpose, the atmosphere was quite electric. An intro to the event and what to expect was given on stage and after the warm up bends and stretches the host announced that by 10:00 on the event day that the Bristol Race for Life 2023 event had already raised over £382,000! It was very humbling to be named on stage as one of the top five fund raisers at just under £2000 for the event so thank you to those that supported us.
The run went without incident, the heat was oppressive, but every time I thought it was getting a bit hard or painful, I just reminded myself that none of those we were running for could feel the pain or heat, they are not here anymore….
We crossed the line and finished the course which I was happy with considering my preparation and training. We picked up our commemorative medal and enjoyed the ice cream promised by Mrs Firth. I am very humbled by all the donations we received and can report that the Race for Life has now raised over £940m in the fight against cancer since its inception.

By Baz Firth, Royal Naval Lodge (abridged version).