Updated on 4th October 2022
First of all, Cherry Lodge Cancer Care sends a big thank you to all our 2022 London Marathon runners and everyone who supported them. There is still time to visit our runners’ fundraising pages and sponsor them if you can. All Cherry Lodge Cancer Care’s many cancer information and support services are provided completely free of charge.
You can access our runners’ fundraising pages by clicking on their names in the list below:
- Diana Bertin
- John Fitzmaurice
- Chris Goldie
- Fabio Moruzzi
- Brad Smith
- Artan Taraboshi
- Gary Withers
- Maki Yoshikura
An impressive fundraising success!
So far, Cherry Lodge runners have together raised just over £10,000 on the Enthuse fundraising platform. Fabio Moruzzi, Artan Taraboshi and Gary Withers have also been fundraising through BNI Fortune.
A fantastic day
The 2022 tcs London Marathon took place in good weather on Sunday 2nd October 2022. More than 42,000 entrants – elite, wheelchair and mass event participants – ran the 26.2 mile course from Greenwich to the finish gate on The Mall. Huge crowds lined the route, cheering on the runners and enjoying a great day out.
Four of our runners finished with times of 4 hours plus. First to complete the course was Diana Bertin, in 4hr 9min. Diana, from Moldavia, aged 29, was our youngest runner. This was her first marathon and she told website reporter Freddy Kater that she loved every minute, even though she found the last 10 miles ‘hard going’. Her training was remarkably done mainly on a treadmill in her local gym as she could only do road runs at weekends.
Next home was John Fitzmaurice, in 4 hr 22min. John was particularly pleased to achieve this time as he had had to take a six-week break from training due to a knee injury, which fortunately healed well and gave him no problems on the big day. This was John’s first marathon – and was run on his birthday, an occasion marked at the 20 mile-point by his wife and children holding up a Happy Birthday placard.
Maki Yoshikura, who finished in 4hr 37min, was thrilled to take up a late place to run for Cherry Lodge. Maki’s parents live next door to CL trustee and website editor, Ruth, who guessed that Maki might be interested when the place became vacant after Giles Pratt had to withdraw due to injury. It transpired that Maki ran her first marathon in 2016 and since then had been unsuccessfully entering the ballot every year to run in the London event.
Artan Taraboshi, Gary Withers and Fabio Moruzzi are all members of a BNI Fortune group that supports Cherry Lodge Cancer Care on an ongoing basis. Artan ran the course in 4hr 44min, Gary in 5hr 33min and Fabio in 6hr 46min. This was Gary’s first marathon, run just a week before his 59th birthday. He was very pleased to finish as he had missed 6 weeks of training due to a calf injury. Fabio, an inexperienced runner, completed the distance, but unfortunately his running mate, Brad Smith, was given medical advice to abandon the race at the half way point. Brad had woken up with a cold that morning and was experiencing breathing difficulties. We send him our commiserations, best wishes and thanks.
Special congratulations are due to our final runner, Chris Goldie, who was very happy to complete the course. His time of 7hr 19min was no mean feat at the age of 75! The following day he reported that it had been ‘a very long day, but just a bit achy today so not too bad’. This was Chris’s third marathon, having pledged to attempt it after running his last one, also for Cherry Lodge, when he was 65.
Click on the images below to enlarge them. Our runners’ big smiles appear to suggest that running in the London Marathon for Cherry Lodge Cancer Care is a very enjoyable experience (though admittedly some of the photographs were taken ahead of this very demanding event!). Maki has told us she never stopped smiling all day on Sunday. Diana, John and Gary were photographed on Monday evening at the Cherry Lodge Centre, where they were given a big thank you and a complimentary massage. If you look closely at the photo of the Finishers’ medal, you will see that, for the first time, it has a braille inscription.
