Stamford’s Morag Roberts, 81, will run London Marathon despite cancer treatment

A woman being treated for cancer is embarking on her seventh London Marathon - aged 81.

Morag Roberts is taking training in her stride despite having regular chemotherapy.

And this year she has decided to raise £4,000 for Blood Cancer UK, a charity funding research into the illness affecting her and about 250,000 others in the UK.

Morag hasn’t always lived in Stamford. Having spent part of her childhood in Norway - her Norwegian father died in a mountain accident when she was young - she then lived in New Zealand, and thanks to an adventurous mother and stepfather, continued her school days in Uruguay and Chile in South America.

After training to be a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital, she worked in various hospitals in the UK, trained as a midwife in Edinburgh, and during 1991 treated injured British Army soldiers in Saudi Arabia as a Gulf War volunteer.

It’s perhaps this experience that has made Morag tougher than most when it comes to running - and when it came to being diagnosed with cancer.

“I was told I had cancer in 2023 after a routine blood test checking my cholesterol levels,” said Morag, who still volunteers in her spare time to support medical and veterans’ causes.

“I had noticed feeling short of breath while running a couple of half marathons, but I hadn’t felt particularly poorly.”

Although there is no cure for Morag’s cancer, chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) type 2, she has chemotherapy to manage it at Peterborough City Hospital and in Stamford.

She feels well enough to run two or three times a week between treatments, and is training to complete the London Marathon on April 27.

If she manages it this year, she will receive her eighth London Marathon medal, last year having completed the ‘London Marathon MyWay’, which enables people complete the distance in a different location.

“I had only recently been diagnosed with cancer and wasn’t sure how I would be,” said Morag.

“So I decided to run the same distance locally. It took me nine hours because I had to return home at various points to check on my husband, Ted, who has dementia.”

This year Morag hopes to be able to smash that finishing time as she joins about 50,000 other participants back on the streets of London.

To help her hit her £4,000 target, Morag’s friends from Stamford Striders running club are helping her to host a quiz night, taking place upstairs at The London Inn, Stamford, on Friday, April 4 at 7.30pm.

Teams of four to six can take part by ringing Chris Gold on 07711 848607. Places are £10 per person, with proceeds going to Morag’s chosen charity.