The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Dentist swaps smiles for miles
An Aboyne dentist will run seven marathons in seven days to raise money on behalf of a colleague with bowel cancer. Roshan Fernandez, 55, will cover a shade over 183 miles in the charity challenge, which starts on May 6 from the front door of his workplace, the Fountain Dental Group practice in Aboyne.
The dentist has already raised more than £4,000 for Bowel Cancer UK.
He was inspired to take on the challenge after his friend and colleague at the practice, David Laidlaw, was diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of just 44.
Roshan says: “When he got the diagnosis it was quite shocking, because he’s got two children and so do I.
“I can very much empathise with that so this has really inspired me to do something and to raise awareness of bowel cancer.”
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in Scotland, according to Bowel Cancer UK, and the target of a country-wide testing programme that sends out home test kits to everyone aged 50 to 74.
However, Roshan says that because David is still in his 40s it underlines the importance of people of all ages to look out for bowel cancer symptoms.
“There’s lot of people like David, who don’t have the automatic tests that come in the post, and there could be symptoms like gut issues or blood in the urine and stools,” he says. “It’s still quite a silent killer.”
Roshan started training for his charity challenge last year, and though he has run multiple marathons before – with a very respectable personal best of 3 hours 19 minutes for the 26.2mile distance – this has been his toughest test yet.
“It has been the hardest thing I have ever trained for,” he says. “I have lived in terror every day of not training enough.”
He plans to run the first six marathons around the Aberdeenshire countryside, sticking mainly to the former Deeside railway line that passes through Aboyne.
But he will complete the seventh and final 26.2 miles at Leeds’ Rob Burrow Marathon on May 12.