Race for Life Weekend

START of last year's race for life in Alexandra Park. Picture: Chris Bull

Oldham women will be pounding the park again on Sunday for the sixth Race for Life.

Alexandra Park once again hosts the Cancer Research UK’s three-mile course which women of all ages walk, run and jog.

The annual Oldham event, one of a series up and down the country, raised £132,000 last year, and nationally Race for Life 2008 raised £44 million.

This year the Oldham Race for Life fundraising target is £135,000, with participation by 2,500 women.

Once again the course will be a lap of the park, then out to Snipe Clough playing fields and back into the park for the finish and goodie bags.

Women can arrive from 9 30am onwards for the 11 am start, when there will be commentary and music, using the entrances at King’s Road and Queen’s Road.

King’s Road, Queen’s Road and Alexandra Road will be closed off with traffic diversions in place.

It is best to park in the town centre and walk there.

Cancer Research UK funds the work of 4,500 scientists, doctors and nurses, and last year spent £333 million on world-class research at centres across the UK.

Last year the charity invested nearly £17 million into research projects in Manchester, much of which helped fund pioneering work carried out by doctors and scientists at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research in Withington.

Researchers there take promising discoveries from the laboratory and develop them into treatments for cancer.

This year’s local event was launched back in March by Oldham research nurse Alison White (pictured, below) who will be taking part.

Alison, who lives in Failsworth, will be among thousands of women who tackle the three mile race at venues across the North-West this summer.

The 37-year-old joined a group of her colleagues from the Christie Hospital to launch Race for Life 2009 and said: “I know from my work on the hospital wards just how important money raised by women at Race for Life is to research in Manchester.

“It’s thanks to the time and commitment of everyone who takes part that we are able to help cancer patients today and hope to improve the diagnosis, treatment and the prevention of cancer.”