Tom Vosper and five of his close friends are taking on a mammoth challenge of running 10 kilometres in all 55 English cities, over a 16-day period, to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK.
The challenge will begin here in the Duchy at 9.00am on Saturday, September 14, just hours before Truro face Brackley Town in the second qualifying round of the FA Cup.
The runners will start their challenge at the Truro City Stadium, before they take in a 10k route around the city. They will then move onto Plymouth, before heading to Exeter and Wells on day one.
During the first week, the challenge will see the runners pound the streets around four cities per day, with all six participants taking part.
The second week will see Tom, Alex, Ben Nathan, Sam and Jon move from London to Hereford then up to Carlisle. They will then travel from east to west to run in Newcastle before finishing in Tom’s home city of Norwich on September 29. Poignantly, this is the day Tom’s dad passed away from prostate cancer in 2017.
The runners will be joined by an army of support which includes friends, family running clubs and the local Norfolk football fraternity too.
“All of us have been directly affected by cancer in one way or another,” Tom told trurocity.co.uk. “I lost my dad and Nathan, who is another runner, lost his dad too.
“Brothers Ben and Alex, there dad has had two bouts of prostate cancer and thankfully beaten them both.
“Sam and Johnny have also experienced it pretty much first hand and it is a horrible disease. I am hoping that we can raise awareness and money to help change the statistic that one in eight men in the UK are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year.
“One man dies every 45 minutes because of prostate cancer and if you look at that in football terms, it is two men during every 90-minute football match that takes place on a Saturday afternoon.
“This is part of why we wanted to do the challenge from football grounds and being a Torquay United fan and growing up in Norwich, there wasn’t many home games we could go to, so it meant travelling to away games with my dad.
“We loved going to different grounds, even if we lost, so that’s another part of the inspiration with this challenge.
“We know it is a bit crazy running 550 kilometres in 16 days, but we wanted to get noticed. None of us are particularly big runners and we have been training and not drinking alcohol to get the challenge done.
“We are confident that we can get it done and we are eternally grateful for the support shown by everyone at Truro City and the wider football community.”
Meanwhile, Gareth Davies, head of media and communications at Truro City, added: “As a club, we are honoured to host the start of Tom’s incredible challenge to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK.
“We wish Tom, Alex, Ben, Nathan, Sam and Jon the very best of luck in raising money and awareness for a very worthy cause. The club will be following their journey closely and we hope many Truro City fans can dig deep and support them.”
- Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men.
- More than 52,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year on average – that’s 144 men every day.
- Every 45 minutes one man dies from prostate cancer – that’s more than 12,000 men every year.
- One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
- Around 490,000 men are living with and after prostate cancer.
To donate to the Run the Cities challenge – Click Here
