Keith Porritt’s wife Alanah died in 2012
(Picture: Keith Porritt)A Londoner is cycling 3,500 miles across the US to raise funds for pancreatic cancer research after his wife died of the disease.
Keith Porritt, 61, has begun his “trip of a lifetime” with three friends, cycling across the top of America for 10 weeks.
The trip marks a decade since his wife Alanah died of pancreatic cancer, just four months after her initial diagnosis in 2012 at the age of 60.
“I started cycling after my wife died, so I’ve only been cycling for eight years,” Mr Porritt told The Standard.
“When I was halfway through my 61st year, I had realised I had lived longer than my wife, even though my wife was nine years older than me.
“That made me stop and think, I really should be celebrating, I really should be doing something worth celebrating that can also raise money.”
But it’s going to be no holiday.
The team - made up of Mr Porritt and friends Nick Myers, Neville Gray and Paul Holbrook - plan to wake up at 5am to avoid searing hot temperatures and ride 60 to 70 miles each day before sleeping in an RV driven by Myers.
Mr Porritt said endurance will be important because he has previously only cycled for three days.
The group is travelling through Idaho, Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, past tourist spots Niagara Falls, New York and finally to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Mr Porritt hopes to raise £50,000 for Pancreatic Cancer UK to improve early diagnosis research.
He has raised more than £15,00 so far on his Just Giving website.
Mr Porritt said his wife would be proud of him.
“Someone who knew Alanah very well said [to me]: ‘Alanah will be very proud of you for doing this’. And I think they’re right,” said Mr Porritt.
“Alanah was very clear, I was 52 when Alanah died, Alanah said: You have another life to live. I think that’s keeping to the spirit of what she told me to.”
In the UK, 80 per cent of people with pancreatic cancer are not being diagnosed until after the disease has spread – almost double the proportion for other cancers.
“Whilst there have been so many improvements to other cancers, there hasn’t been much change to the way pancreatic cancer has been dealt with for the last 40 years,” Mr Porritt said.
“That’s annoying, upsetting, but I don’t want to get into the game of comparing cancers…I’m just pointing out that this is one of the top killing cancers, yet it has minimal funding.”
Survival rates for pancreatic cancer have barely improved since the 1970s in the UK, but survival in the US has increased as a higher proportion of people are diagnosed at an early stage, Pancreatic Cancer UK said.
