A fundraiser is encouraging people to take part in a charity stair run to help raise money for a cancer sufferer and his family.
Antony Newby, who organises the ‘161 Killer Stairs’ run every Sunday in Armley Park, is encouraging people to sign up to do a combined one million stairs to raise money for friend Mark ‘Benj’ Bonny.
Mr Bonny was told in May he has stage 4 cancer of the kidney, which has spread. Mr Newby said:
“Benj has been told that his cancer is not currently operable, nor is it the type of cancer where chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments are an option. Whilst the care and attention he has received from the NHS has been very good and he is currently on treatment to minimise the tumour, we want to give him the best possible chance of a full recovery and we desperately want him to have the treatment that specialist clinics can provide.
“We have found a private clinic, “Cancer Options”, who have devised a personalised treatment plan for Benj where the goal is for the cancer to become operable. It is not yet clear whether this will be possible on the NHS and since time is of the essence, with the help of donations from you, it will give Benj the opportunity to progress with this specialist treatment.”
Mr Newby is organising a charity stair run/walk/crawl to do 1,000,000 stairs in one day and raise £15,000 to help pay for his treatment. More than £5,000 has been raised so far. He added:
“I organised this charity stair run two years running to raise money to buy some disabled children new wheelchairs and we smashed all targets so I want us to do it again but to try and help save Benj’s life.
“If 250 people turn up on the day we only have to run 13 sets of the 161 killer stairs each. That’s the easy part… Benji has the biggest battle but he is determined to beat this and with our help he can do it!”
The event takes place in Armley Park on Sunday, August 13 between 9.30am to 7pm.
More details on the Facebook event page. Check out the Crowdfunding page here.
Mr Newby runs a number of regular fitness sessions across Leeds.