Fighting Stage 4

I finished radiotherapy this week.

In January 2025, I was diagnosed with advanced, aggressive prostate cancer.

Stage 4. At 44.

I was told that was remarkably young to get Prostate Cancer — well below the average.
My Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) was 186 — well above the average.

I had hoped prostate cancer might be one of the “good ones.”
Turns out it isn’t. I was told that even if I responded well to treatment, I’d have years, not decades.

My kids were two and seven. I want those decades.

So I had chemotherapy for 18 weeks. Then radiotherapy for four.
And I threw in every marginal gain I could find — diet, fasting, cold, heat, oxygen, exercise — anything that might help.

Now my PSA is 0.03 — almost undetectable.

Radiotherapy marks the end of active treatment, but I’ll stay on hormone therapy to keep it that way.

The joke in the prostate cancer community is that it leaves you looking like ET — bald, tubby, and weak.

I could pay that price for extra time.
But studies show exercise can improve survival by more than 60 percent, and there’s no reason to stop there — Kevin Webber is running ultramarathons, after all.

I’m figuring out what returning to work looks like.
But I can’t live PSA test to PSA test, scan to scan.

I kept my hair during chemo — now I’m trying to avoid Extra-Terrestrial status.
It’s not time to go home yet.

Over the last ten months, I’ve improved every one of my health metrics beyond PSA, completed charity rides, / and raised over £40,000 for Prostate Cancer UK.
Next year / I’ll run the London Marathon and raise even more.

Now I’m focusing on progress, not prognosis:
🏃 Running
🚴 Cycling
🏋️ Strength training
🏊 Swimming
🎾 Racquet sports and golf — for fun, fitness, and connection.

I am also setting some work goals (this doesn’t feel like the place for that), some general wellness goals (beyond the PSA!) and some writing goals, but that will all come out in due course.

To give myself purpose beyond the PSA, I’m following Mark Lewis’s “Above Average” idea (‘be above average’) — aiming to get above average in everything that matters.

Can a man with advanced prostate cancer get above average? I don’t really know.

But even if I don’t, trying will do me good.

So I’ll give it a damn good go.
I’ll give more detail here and keep track of my goals, to keep myself on some sort of track and to keep my mind off the PSA.

Any support is welcome. 💪