Back to fishing next week because I wanted to say a huge thank you to some incredibly kind people for donating to my Race for Life 5k tomorrow

There is always so much fishing stuff I want to talk about on here, but as per my blog post from Monday, I am running the Plymouth Race for Life 5k on Sunday in an effort to help raise some money for Cancer Research UK - and a humbling number of very kind people have generously donated a lot of money. I could not be more grateful and I wanted to say a huge thank you - thank you! I cannot find a way of thanking you individually on the Race for Life website page, so I thought I would do it here instead. There is still time to keep donating, click here.

Donating money to charity is an extremely personal thing. I would never, ever expect anybody to dig into their pockets and donate to a charity thing which I have chosen to do because cancer killed my dad almost a year ago now. Times are tough enough as it is, but a number of very kind people have put their hands in their pockets and donated to Cancer Research UK and it is beyond humbling. I have a Race for Life 5k page here, my wife has a page here, and collectively we are a “team” raising money for the Bowelbabe fund. As of the time of writing this blog post on Friday morning, as a team we are up to £2,200, and we cannot believe it. Thank you so much.

I felt so inspired about all this that I went out “running” yesterday morning and broke 30 mins for a (cross country) 5k for the first time ever - 29:33 to be exact. Having come from never being a runner only a few months ago, this is a big thing for me. Damn right it wasn’t easy, and serious runners will be running a 5k way faster than this, but it’s a PB for me and I was knackered but really buzzed up when I finished. I would need to shave 10 mins off my best time to get down to my youngest girl’s fastest 5k - which obviously ain’t happening, not at my age and with my lack of running physique! But I achieved a goal, and I know I can run a 5k on Sunday.

My profound thank you again. You all have a good weekend, hope you find a few fish, I am seriously wondering if the winds are ever going to shift, I will get back to fishing next week but I am sure you can understand my using this blog to highlight this Race for Life 5k charity thing. Screw you cancer and all the misery and heartache you cause. I’d have loved a lot more time with my wonderful dad, but it wasn’t to be and I miss him so much. I have had a few photos printed of my dad, so my wife and I are going to stick them to our t-shirts when we do the Race for Life on Sunday. Thank you, thank you, thank you……………….