Tour de F$%k Cancer - Stage 4: The SuperMaratona

My Story

A little over a year ago (January 2025) I stood in a quiet woodland and burried my father. At the end of the previous summer his cancer had come back and he decided not to put days onto a life already well lived, but rather to put as much life into his days as he could, and to face death on his own terms: to look it in the eye and smile. I was very lucky to be out of work at the time - it meant that I didn't need to ask anyone for compasionate leave. My wife told me to go and spend as much time with him as I could, and he and I got to discuss all sorts of things, from serious stuff like what to do with your life, what courage is, and how to be the best version of yourself possible, to less serious things like how good Carl Urban is in Dredd, how impressed we were with Sandman on Netflix, and that we both thought Tom Veitch's The Light and Darkness War would make a great tv series. We also discussed the fact that I would inevitably set myself a mad cycling challenge to raise money for cancer research. He said whatever I chose he would only ask that I do two things: 1) do something that was slightly scary and utterly insane, and 2) raise money for cancer as a whole - not lung cancer specifically. In the weeks after his funeral, as I pondered what the challenge should be, my wife again gave me some outstanding advice: wait a year. Grieve. Mourn. Heal. Don't throw yourself into something that will distract you from a process that is necessary and healthy, and don't worry about finding 'the right' challenge - something will come up and when you see it you'll know. She was so right, and now a year and a day after I said goodbye for the last time I know what the challenge will be. The SuperMaratona, a route that links every mountain pass that The Maratona dles Dolomites has ever used in its 40 years. 280km over 13 mountain passes for a total of 8500m elevation, nearly a whole Everest. I can't have cancer for a day, but if I'm going to raise money for cancer research I feel I ought to do something that reflects what cancer is like, and honours everyone that is, or has, battled through their own cancer journey: It puts you through the wringer. It's like being hit by a truck only to have it then reverse over you, and then when tomorrow comes it starts all over again. So I've found something that will put me through the wringer, that will take me to some dark painful places where I just want to give up, that will make me find how deep my well actually is. Something that is so daunting that my training is fuelled mainly by the fear of the thing itself. Almost everyone I've told has said I'm insane, utterly bonkers, and definitely a few sandwhiches short of a picnic, but they've also said that it definitely meets the criteria Dad set. Simon, on the other hand, said "Awesome ... can I come too?" Then Mark did the same...and Robert. So now "I" is "we", and we're going to try and do this all in a day. All 280 kms and 8500m of elevation, in one very long, hilly, definitely not flat at all, day. It'll be a challenge to say the least, but that's the point isn't it?