In the running for a weekend of fun and heroics
Jul 13 2009 by Ben Guy, The Journal
A CANCER survivor yesterday sounded the horn on a 5km run as thousands of women pulled on their trainers to raise cash for charity.
Nicola Whiteman was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in February 2003 and underwent months of surgery and several bouts of chemotherapy.
But yesterday she joined more than 5,000 women taking part in the women-only Race for Life event, which aimed to raise £257,000 for Cancer Research UK.
And after setting the fun-runners on their way, 37-year-old Nicola, from Blyth, Northumberland, told how it was due to the support of her loving husband Gary, 41, and her 10-year-old son, Joshua, that she pulled through the ordeal.
She said: “The whole thing was just horrendous. When you find out something like that it shakes your whole world.
“But my whole family was so supportive and I have some really, really good friends who helped me through.
“Events like the Race For Life are fantastic – it means people can get together to raise cash for charity.”
A sea of tutus, fairy wings and silly costumes painted Newcastle’s Exhibition Park a shade of shocking pink.
Setting the second wave of runners off were four sisters from Northumberland who lost their mother to cancer.
Debbie Hepworth, 40, Malana Jarvis, 36, Amanda Huggan, 32 and Jemma Watson, 28, lost their 38-year-old mother, Margaret Jarvis, to cervical cancer in 1988.
Just three years earlier the sisters, from Cramlington, had tragically lost their father, Jack Watson, 32, in a diving accident off St Mary’s Lighthouse, near Whitley Bay.
And while the thousands of women were pulling on their trainers on Tyneside, there were similar scenes on Wearside for the Great North 10km.
Traffic ground to a halt in Sunderland as 5,000 fun-runners completed the city centre six-mile route that both started and finished at the Stadium of Light.
Boxer Tony Jeffries greeted those on the start line and joined a host of other celebrities at the event including TV presenter Jeff Brown and Horrible Histories author Terry Deary.
