The Girls of B85 Racing for Life

Now to test the memory! It has been 18 days since the 'Girls of B85' ran in the Race for Life in Southampton. The atmosphere on the day was a cocktail between emotional, electric and exhaustion.

For those who may know, our fellow colleague, PhD student, one of my closest friends is fighting for his life and mobility as a result of an original tumour found in his brain that has spread to his spine. At the age of 23 Christopher Ford, the strongest man I know, is battling through cancer as well as possibly facing a lifetime in a wheelchair. His strength and attitude is admirable and one could only hope for such a positive outlook. Follow his progress on Twitter at @Chrisvstumour. For this reason along with others, a group of nine girls from the Centre of Biological Sciences and School of Medicine took part in fundraising and running in the Race for Life.

Besides from training we decided it was a good idea to not only fundraise for our event, but also to share with our colleagues our outstanding bakery skills. On the 22^nd of June we held a bake sale with perfectly iced cupcakes, nematode cookies and gingerbread DNA gels, courtesy of the finest bakers in the building! The C. elegans L4 nematodes were very popular and tasty as were the aptly decorated DNA baked gels! For photos see a fellow colleague’s blog post at http://cabbagesofdoom.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/cakes.html.

With a 5K route through The Common of Southampton ahead of us we shared a warm-up with over 5000 other women and only one achievable goal in mind: racing for life for beloved ones suffering past, present and future; racing for Cancer Research UK.  Looking fashionable with our token personalised pink running tops plastered with black glitter print ‘I heart B85’, we set off en route. Luckily missing the dismal weather, we all finished between 30 and 40 minutes; not bad for Science geeks! All in all we had a brilliant day and between us we have raised over £1300 for Cancer Research UK. If you are feeling charitable after reading this – more donations are welcome at http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/Girls-of-B85.

Registered for next year's 10K :)