Whilst it’s not unusual for a football player to donate a shirt to raise money for charity, one Swansea City Ladies player is quite literally taking it a step further.
Meet Katy Hosford, a winger for the Swans Ladies team, who has taken on the challenge of running the London Marathon.
Katy, who has been with the Swans since she was 16 years old, won’t be running up and down the wing for the Ladies in the FAW Women’s Cup First Round game against Coed Duon this weekend, instead she’ll be pounding the streets of London raising money for Prostate Cancer UK.
It is a little known fact that Prostate Cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK, with more than 47,500 men being diagnosed every year, that’s 129 men a day.
In fact, every 45 minutes, one man dies from Prostate Cancer, that’s a staggering 11,500 deaths a year.
In Wales alone, almost 600 men die from prostate cancer every year, whilst more than 2,500 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Katy is running the marathon in memory of her Grandad, Les Skeels, who sadly passed away with Prostate Cancer in May 2016.
Her aim is to raise as much money as possible to help the charity, whom help so many people in the UK affected by the awful disease.
We caught up with Katy to talk about the marathon and how she manages to juggle her job with the Swansea City Foundation, playing for the Swansea City Ladies and finding the time to put in the training needed to undertake running a marathon.
“Training for the marathon has been intense. I really enjoy running and I tend to do a lot of road running throughout the week as part of my fitness for football, before I decided to run a marathon.”
“I’ve always wanted to challenge myself and attempt a marathon and I thought this would be a great opportunity for it to be the London marathon and raise money for such an amazing charity.”
“On times it has been difficult, trying to get the miles in to make sure I’m fit to run, but also to train twice a week with the team and play a game on the weekend. I’ve had to find the right balance to physically cope with both and make sure I can still play to the best of my ability on the weekend.”
“Thankfully football has given me a base fitness, so the running has been a bit easier than I thought! I’ve managed to fit the runs around my job, I usually go after work for a run and a lot of the time I just run as far as I can rather than setting myself a target, I find this helps me mentally.”
Currently Katy is nearly half-way to making her target of £2,000 – but she needs the help of Swansea City fans everywhere to reach her target.
How to Donate
You can make a donation, however big or small, online via a dedicated JustGiving page.
Alternatively, fans of the Swans can buy a raffle ticket for a £5 donation and be in with a chance of winning an autographed Swansea City first team shirt.
All you need to do to enter is donate £5 via the dedicated JustGiving page, whilst remembering to leave the word ‘Raffle’ in the comment box when donating.
Remember every single donation you make will go towards helping this amazing charity and ultimately help us all to beat Prostate Cancer.