A Frome man has recently completed a double Ironman challenge to fund treatment for his friend who has a rare form of cervical cancer.
Ben Hansell completed the challenge of swimming 4.8 miles, cycling 224 miles and running 52.4 miles, in a total of 39 hours.
Ben’s friend Zoe Essam, is a mother to two young children and has a rare form of cervical cancer. Her husband has been running a campaign to raise £40,000 for Zoe to have breakthrough cancer treatment in Spain, which is not available in the UK.
Ben’s double ironman challenged raised just under £7,500. During the actual challenge, he raised £2,000. With Ben’s help, Zoe’s family have now reached their fundraising target but they will now continue fundraising to raise awareness of rare forms of cervical cancer and treatment.
Ben completed the double Ironman at the beginning of January saying, “I did it on possibly the worst weekend ever weather-wise. I started off with a swim in Warminster pool, which was probably the nicest thing. It was warm and I started at 6.30am. Then I did the 224-mile cycle, some of which was completed on a loop near Westbury during the day. Lots of people from my cycling club, Pronto Bikes in Frome, came to join me.
“I carried on until 9pm at night when the temperature really dropped. The road started to get quite icy, so I had to stop cycling outside, drive home and then continue the bike ride on my indoor trainer. To be honest, this was probably the hardest bit out of the whole challenge. Being in the warm and by your bed when you have been cycling for 250 miles was quite challenging mentally and physically. It was pretty hard going. I did stop for an hour’s sleep, but the bike part of it took me 15 hours in total.
“Then after I had finished on the bike, I went to the Old Showfield to start the double marathon around the parkrun route. That was in freezing cold weather; it was icy. I was lucky enough to be joined by a member of my triathlon club in Frome. I had someone running with me for the whole time, all 52 miles. Even then it was friends or members of the triathlon club, or even complete strangers who saw this online, which was nice.
“Frome parkrun also happened at the same time, so that was going on during part of it.
“The run took me a lot longer than I thought it would. I was running from 8am on Saturday morning until 9.15pm on Saturday night. I did all this with only one hour of sleep.”
Ben is no stranger to Ironman challenge; however he says that he has never completed anything of this size and scale.
“It was really hard, but not as hard as what my friends are going through,” says Ben,
With the fundraising target now reached, Ben said he is helping Zoe and her family set up a charity to raise awareness of rare forms of cervical cancer and the various alternative therapies available worldwide.
“These treatments are difficult to find out about because they are not available in this country,” says Ben. “The charity will help raise awareness of what’s available and in September, I will be doing an 800km cycle through the desert in Spain to raise funds for the charity.
“The double Ironman was well worth doing, it was very rewarding but very, very difficult.”
