Morrisons man to do National 3 Peaks and London Marathon

James Badger was with his wife Philippa in Robins Hood Bay on the North Yorkshire coast when she said her legs were feeling a bit tired. Two days later she was dead.

“We did not think too much of it, but that evening she felt a bit worse so she rang our GP,” he said.

“She had blood tests and was told she had acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). After receiving a blood transfusion, she was transferred to a hospital in Leeds but died shortly afterwards.

“It was such a sudden shock for my family, for us all.

“Going from being a normal healthy person and a normal family to dealing with this in less than two days.

“The hardest thing I ever had to do was tell my three children that Mummy had died.”

Now starting on Tuesday, the Morrisons director will complete the National Three Peaks challenge, cycle from Snowdon to London and run the London Marathon, all in five days, to fund vital research into the blood cancer that killed his wife. He will start on Tuesday and hopes to finish outside Bukcingh

“Philippa was an incredible person and an amazing mum to our three children,” he said. “After losing her so suddenly, I wanted to do something positive in her memory and help fund the research that could stop other families going through the same heartbreak.”

Since Philippa’s death on the holiday in 2022, James has cycled 1,600km from Land’s End to John O’Groats in eight days, completed an “Everest” cycling challenge in the Yorkshire Dales by riding up the same hill 90 times, passing the churchyard where Philippa is buried on every climb, with friends supporting him along the way as well as cycling from Harrogate to London in three days on a vintage tandem, a distance of 500km before running in his first London marathon.

He has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for Blood Cancer UK to support research into AML.

 Matthew White, Director of Fundraising at Blood Cancer UK, said:  “ What James is doing in Philippa’s memory is incredible.

“Acute myeloid leukaemia is one of the toughest blood cancers to treat. Just one in three people with the hardest to treat blood cancers survive five years after diagnosis, and for many patients, treatment options are still very limited.

“The research James is helping to fund could lead to the next generation of treatments for AML and that’s why challenges like this matter so much.”