Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 99, October 2017 | Page 25

Feature
Ma
Bit Cold for
Comrades
Training
Modern Athlete receives many letters or pics from runners with a story with a bit of a difference, and we try to publish as
many of them as we can, like this contribution from South African Expat Dr Paul Firth, who lives in Boston in the USA. We
suspect he rather enjoyed the warm weather at the Comrades t his year!
I
n January 1991, I was in the back of a pick-up
truck, riding past a small hospital in south-western
Uganda. As a Cape Town medical student hitch-
hiking across Africa, I wanted to go in and look round
the hospital, but I knew I would not really be able
to offer the patients much, either to relieve their
suffering or cure their ills.
A quarter century later, Mbarara Hospital is still
there, and has been growing slowly but steadily.
And I now live in Boston in the USA, where I work
at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH),
delivering anaesthesia for children in the Paediatric
Haematology-Oncology Department. The MGH is not
only helping children survive cancer in the US, but
now is also helping to start a children’s cancer clinic in
Uganda, thanks in part to the fundraising running of
many of the doctors and staff at MGH.
Since 1998, the Mass General Marathon Team has
raised over $10 million to support the paediatric
haematology-oncology programme at MGH, as well as
other projects. The funds raised are directed to cancer
care and research initiatives that enhance the quality
of life for the hospital’s youngest cancer patients. This
is for a cause dear to my heart – helping children
and their families overcome the burden of childhood
cancer – because in my job as an anaesthesiologist,
I am fortunate to work in the MGH Paediatric Cancer
Clinic. I say fortunate, because I get to work alongside
heroes – these children facing the massive challenge
of beating cancer, and their families who suddenly face
the reality of their child being diagnosed with a life-
threatening disease.
It is a privilege to help these heroes rise to overcome
the painful challenges of surgery, anaesthesia,
chemotherapy and radiation for their child. And
through running, I can help them still further, fighting
kids’ cancer, one step at a time.
I ran my first marathon in Cape Town in 1992, and
have now done more than 30 in total, including the
Boston and London Marathons. I’ve also done the
Comrades Marathon three times – twice when I still
lived in South Africa, clocking 8:57:54 in the Down
Run of 1993 and then a 9:37:31 in 1995, in another
Down Run. I ran Comrades again this year, almost 25
years after my first, and I came home in 11:49:31 –
much slower than in my younger days! Of course, it
may also have been down to the difficulty of training
through the Boston winter, which makes doing the
peak training from January to March rather difficult, as
you can see from a few of my photos!
I run to help raise funds both to support families with
a child going through the marathon of cancer care
– and to ensure that for other children and parents
in another part of the world, a diagnosis of cancer
does not mean a diagnosis of slow death. It’s a long
and arduous process to train for and run a marathon,
especially through a freezing winter, but it’s my friends
and family who keep me motivated to keep doing this,
and I want to thank everybody who made donations to
support the children and their families battling cancer.
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