I am dedicating my participation in this event to the memory of my mother, Phyllis Mahony, who died in 2008 after a 28 year battle with breast cancer and its complications.

In the 1940's Phyllis had consulted her GP because she had detected a lump in her breast. The doctor sent her away with a flea in her ear because it was war time and he had more important things to worry about than a woman's vanity about the shape of her breasts.

A rather timid person, Phyllis didn't mention the lump again to any doctor she saw for fear of being ridiculed ... until about forty years later when it had developed into a weeping sore.

A radical mastectomy and years of chemo and hormone therapy followed. After twentyeight years from being first diagnosed, she finally gave up the fight.

Like her mother, my sister, Anne, has now been diagnosed and is being treated for breast cancer. If my efforts can raise funds to enable a cure for breast cancer to be found, or even just improve the treatment for it, I will be satisfied.

Funds raised in The Sunsuper Ride to Conquer Cancer will support groundbreaking, critical cancer research being undertaken at WAIMR, Western Australia's premier adult medical research institute, investigating the genetic and environmental causes of a range of diseases, including breast and prostate cancer.