Dafydd Owen, 43, has run, swum, cycled and struggled almost 160km this year in a series of extreme races to show his support for Cancer Research Wales. As our guest blogger, he has shared his thoughts, feelings, experiences (and humour!). Thank you Dafydd.
I have been known to shed a tear. I well up singing Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau before a rugby match. I wept when Mickey died in Rocky 3. So when my good friend Dai choked up during his wedding speech in October 2012 I turned into Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars. He was remembering lost loved ones and in particular the Bride’s mum and two of the Groom’s work colleagues who lost the battle with cancer. I remembered my grandmother’s fight against lung cancer (she had never smoked once, it was all passive smoking related), what it did to this amazing woman and how the twinkle went out of her eyes. And my mother-in-law who successfully overcame breast cancer but bravely went through hell in doing so.
I didn’t dwell on it that night as I was concentrating on dad dancing and getting drunk including setting my hand on fire with flaming sambuca. Over the following week it did keep crossing my mind though and after a while I resolved to commit to the cause. On the tables at the wedding was a small badge for all the guests as Emma and Dai had made a contribution to Cancer Research Wales plus it turned out that I had once worked with their fundraising manager. Fate it would seem had brought us together.
In my mind the charity was a huge organisation operating from shiny offices with money cascading endlessly
through the doors and being wheel barrowed in to vaults. Ok, maybe my imagination was running away with me. A small bit of digging however showed a totally different picture, run by a small dedicated band of staff, and hugely reliant on volunteers, who work so hard to scrape in a few million pounds a year and make that stretch beyond what I thought was possible. I was humbled.
Through funding grants and projects they maintain a specialist cancer library, a vast bank of tissue samples and sponsor research scientists and students who are constantly trying to find new and better ways to fight cancer in all of its horrible forms. Importantly for a proud Welshman, all the money is kept in Wales and not diluted across the UK meaning that the research can be focussed and dedicated too.
I decided to raise funds for Cancer Research Wales, to help them with their work. I chose to take part in a mix of challenges including obstacle races and triathlons out of pure self interest on my part, but it is not difficult to draw parallels between my efforts and those battling the illness. The pain of electric shocks, the seemingly endless road ahead, running hard in mud and feeling like you are making no progress, finishing one tough stage and having to start another, jumping into the dark unknown, you can keep piling up the metaphors. I was lucky to know that I was doing this for other people which kept me going. I had friends by my side to pick me up when I fell and to cheer me on when I thought I would have to stop. I was doing this for fun and I knew where the finish line was. Cancer Research Wales provide all that and more for people who don’t even know if there is a finish line. I am proud to have helped in any small way.
I’m crying again now.
You can sponsor Dafydd here: http://www.justgiving.com/Dafydd-Owen
