Author: Danni Smith

A former cancer patient who has spent over twenty years completing challenges after being given the all-clear following his testicular cancer diagnosis is now set to complete his latest challenge – an ‘ultra’ 62 mile-run from his home in Swavesey in Cambridgeshire to the football grounds of Tottenham Hotspur in London. 

Sean Papworth, 50, an avid Spurs fan, will complete what he is calling the ‘Swavesey to Spurs SIXTY Miler’ with his godson Max Rose, 22, an avid Liverpool fan – with both men intending to cross the finishing line in each of their team’s strip. 

Setting off from The Green in Swavesey on Saturday 26^th April, the pair – who only recently completed the Cambridge Half Marathon – will not only cross the line in two different football strips but will arrive a day before the two Premier League Teams are set to play each other.  

Covering a total of 62 miles, Sean and Max will follow a route running along paths and through villages parallel to the A10. Friends and family will follow in a support vehicle with others on bikes. Setting off at six in the morning, with just a few stops along the way for food, the pair are expected to take between 12 and 15 hours to reach their destination.  

Describing the ultra as ‘unchartered territory in running’ for him, Sean said; “I am going to have to dig deep to achieve this. It’s going to be a tough run. Just training doing 19 miles, I can feel it in my legs.” 

Sean, who has completed numerous fundraising challenges since being given the all-clear from testicular cancer 20 years ago, is hoping to raise over two and a half thousand pounds for Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust as well as mental health charity Mind, as a way of thanking staff at Addenbrooke’s who treated both him, and his dad, who sadly died from bowel cancer when Sean was just 12 years old. 

Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) is the official charity for Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the Rosie and funds cutting-edge equipment, groundbreaking research, and improvements to the environment for both staff and patients, above and beyond what the NHS is able to provide. 

Sean was diagnosed with testicular cancer back in 2003 when he was just 28. He had two baby girls at the time and, as a joiner, had just set up his business making staircases. He said his wife, Kelly, had to bring the girls up while he was undergoing treatment, which involved surgery followed by intense rounds of chemo. His cancer then spread and surgeons had to cut open his stomach to remove a lot of lymph nodes.  

He was given the all-clear a year later and went on to have a boy, completing his family of three: his eldest daughter Nevie, now 25; middle daughter Teagan, 22, and son Dexter, 18. 

But despite his own battle with cancer, Sean said it was losing his dad from bowel cancer when he was just 12 years old that left the biggest imprint on his life. 

He says the nod to mental health is his acknowledgement of how tough it was to lose his dad. He says while he can talk very openly about his own cancer, he found it really hard to talk about his dad growing up, and counselling later in life really helped him. 

“My dad had bowel cancer and it was very quick. I remember him being ill in the September and him coming out of hospital in the December. I remember my mum telling me it was terminal and that he had come home because he didn’t want to be in hospital when he died and then we lost him in the January.”

“As much as my cancer was hard, the toughest thing I’ve ever had to go through was losing my dad.”

“I used to clam up about my dad especially. I think because I was such a young age. But then I had some counselling, when I was about 20, and then some more a couple of years ago. As the years have gone by, I’ve talked about it but at the same time put a bit of a brave face on and just sort of taken it in my stride rather than actually going, ‘that was quite a big thing that happened to me.”

Describing cancer as a ‘horrible, cruel disease’, Sean says he had to turn to counselling again more recently after reaching middle age and losing other friends to cancer as well as a close friend to suicide last year. 

“I just think when you get to this age you evaluate things a lot more. I had a couple of years where everything was happening at once and it sort of took its toll.” 

Since his recovery Sean has set himself numerous challenges including biking from the UK to Sweden; completing Lands End to John o’Groats; running the London Marathon last year and the Cambridge Half Marathon this year, along with the 2025 Paris Marathon – with the grand finale (for now!) the ‘Swavesey to Spurs SIXTY Miler’.  

Sean says all of the challenges he has set himself are a nod to those who have not made it through their treatment and says: “I’m still here and I’m still fine. That’s why I am doing this run, not just to raise money but to prove I can and because I’m alive and just the fact that a lot of people don’t come out of hospital alive.”  

Recalling his time on the ward, Sean says he remembers a 13-year-old being treated for cancer – “which was really humbling” – and a man around his own age, who also had testicular cancer and had the same operation as him.  

“He later died and I remember his wife messaging me to say that they had lost him and that’s why I do everything I do. It’s in memory of all those people who haven’t made it, not the people who do. To me, if you’ve had cancer and got through it then you have to do something good with that.” 

He also remembers his eldest daughter coming to see him in hospital when she was only three.

“I remember seeing her little face coming into the ward. Her face dropped when she saw me, and things like that really stick with you.”

But as hard as his experiences have been, Sean says remembering how lucky he is helps him to keep going.

“Everyone gets low moments in their life and you can’t always snap out of them quickly but when you get into a better place you can tell yourself not to feel sorry for yourself because there are lots of people going through awful things like cancer, including little children. You can have a moan and feel sorry for yourself but that’s the slap on the face you need to keep going.” 

Sean will start the run from his home in Swavesey to Tottenham Hotspur football grounds in an ACT t-shirt but plans to have several t-shirt changes along the way, including a couple of shirts he is having designed with his sponsors’ names on. However, he plans to cross the finishing line in his Tottenham Hotspur shirt. Max – who is the son of his close friend Simon, whose kids have all grown up together – will be wearing his Liverpool strip.  

Asked how he thought they would both manage the run, Sean said: “Max is more than half my age and a lot fitter than me but he’s never done a marathon before so I’ve got that over him because I’ve had that experience. As far as rivalry goes though, it only goes as far as our football teams, not the run. We are going to need to have each others’ backs for this run and be strong for each other.”   

Cambridge is set to have its own cancer research hospital, to be built on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus by 2029. The Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital (CCRH) will be the first specialist cancer hospital for the East of England. It will bring together clinical and research expertise under one roof – allowing clinicians to detect cancer earlier, treat it more precisely and save more lives.

*** Sean will be auctioning off a Tottenham Hotspur pennant signed by some of the current squad – and anyone wanting to donate to his fundraising page, or sponsor him £200 for a logo on his running shirts – should go to Sean’s Give Wheel page at: https://www.givewheel.com/fundraising/5937/sean