Siblings complete marathon challenge for brother

Jack Holmes (middle) pictured with his brothers Lewis (L) and Mark (R) who ran seven marathons in seven days

The brothers of a man from North Yorkshire who has a soft tissue cancer have run seven marathons in seven days to get more funding for the disease.

Jack Holmes’ younger brothers Lewis and Mark, who are from York, raised £10,000 after completing their challenge of running 183 miles (295km) between York and London between 25 and 31 July.

They wanted to raise awareness and funds about Sarcoma cancer, which develops in the bones and soft tissues of the body, such as in muscles, blood vessels, nerves, deep skin tissues and fibrous tissues.

Jack Holmes said it had been a “complete shock” to get diagnosed at the age of 33, shortly after returning from his honeymoon in October.

Explaining why they decided to run seven marathons in seven days, Mark Holmes said all of them had a background in fitness.

"The three of us have always been into our sport as we have done the York marathon together and have also done a half iron man that they hosted at Castle Howard a couple of years ago."

Mr Holmes said he had already been in training for a triathlon so was in good shape ahead of their challenge.

"From about May onwards, I really ramped up the training with lots of hours on the roads in London clocking up the miles and by the end of training I was ready to crack on with the challenge.”

Jack Holmes said he first noticed a small lump on his knee but didn’t get it checked out until months later after he had been on his honeymoon with wife Rachel, as by that time it had started to “grow really quickly and it started to get quite painful”.

The pair wanted to raise awareness and get funding to help their older brother

He said: “By the time I’d had my diagnosis, unfortunately it had spread to my lungs as well.

“It was pretty surreal as I’d never heard of Sarcoma and I first thought it would be kind of simple for them to cut it out and I’d be absolutely fine, so actually initially I don’t think I grasped how serious it was.

“When I was told the severity of it, I felt complete shock as you don’t understand what is going on inside your body, which I think is a really scary situation.”

He then started having chemotherapy for about seven months, but due to the sarcoma being very aggressive and there being no cure, his therapy was focussed on quality of life.

His brother Lewis Holmes said they had always been close as siblings, but they became even closer after the diagnosis.

"You feel a bit of helplessness at first because you don’t really know how you can help the situation," he said.

Jack Holms said it was his idea to set up their charity, Transcend Sarcoma, as they initially decided to put on a gig to raise some money for funding research into the disease.

“The gig was a huge success and we decided to put more on as some people wanted to be more involved in what we were doing and we thought about making it a bigger thing and now we have a registered charity.

“The biggest thing I would like people to take away from my story is that if they’ve got symptoms to get them checked out as it really could be the difference between having a life limiting disease and making a recovery.”

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