Faulconbridge's Ryan Elston is set to ride a mountain bike 200km in two days for charity, after his close friend lost both parents to cancer in the space of three years.
Mr Elston, 26, will participate in the Sunsuper Ride to Conquer Cancer on October 11 and 12, with all fundraising donations going to the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse - a leading cancer treatment and support centre.
"I aim to raise $2500, but I'd really love to smash that goal," said Mr Elston, a health science student at the University of Western Sydney.
Seeing his friend Rhiannon White's mother Sharon, a dedicated teacher's aide, battle cancer for six months before passing away motivated him to sign up for the ride.
"Sharon inspired me a lot - I had a pretty strong relationship with her," he said. "My friend barely slept [during the treatment], as she tended to her mother day and night while also working on her PhD."
To add to his challenge, Mr Elston decided to ride a mountain bike instead of the easier option of a road bike as a symbolic gesture of his friend's efforts.
"That would have been the longest, hardest six months of someone's life, so if I can get through 200 kilometres on a mountain bike, I'd be pretty happy," he said.
"Unfortunately my friend didn't know about support services [such as Lifehouse] until around two months into the treatment.
"So I'm doing this ride partly to help promote the work that these services do."
On the first day of the ride Mr Elston will set off from Sydney Olympic Park at 6.30am and ride to Windsor, where participants will camp overnight along the Hawkesbury River. The next day they will repeat the journey in reverse.
"I'll have a camera on my helmet and on my handlebars filming the whole thing, including any exciting bits," he said.
"Hopefully there'll be no crashes."
Rhiannon White is glowing with praise for her friend's efforts: "Ryan doing the Sunsuper ride to conquer cancer will never bring my mum back.
"However, it puts a smile on my face every day knowing that the money raised by Ryan and all the others in this event - people as selfless as my mum - may just give someone else more time to spend with their mum one day."
The Chris O'Brien Lifehouse at Camperdown - founded by and named after the late cancer specialist - "makes things easier for people with cancer by providing cutting edge clinical treatments, complementary therapies, education, research and emotional support all in one location for cancer patients, their carers and their families," according to its website.
Cancer, a disease involving the abnormal growth and multiplication of the body's cells, will be diagnosed in 128,000 new cases in Australia this year, reports the Cancer Council Australia. That number is set to rise to 150,000 by the year 2020.
To donate to the cause go to conquercancer.org.au/index.html, click "Sydney", then "donate", and search "Ryan Elston".
n To see Leura's efforts to conquer cancer go to p24.
