Our swim has been born from a long standing desire to do something big enough to raise a stack of cash for Cancer Research.  When we first came up with the swim idea, we realised it would fit the job perfectly.  At university we were both lucky enough to be friends with Dave, or Boagy as we called him, of whom we have many fond and funny memories.  We found out at the start of our third year that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, neuroendocrine carcinoma, at the age of just 20.  I remember sitting in the library, my head throbbing, having just found out.  We wrote to each other regularly over the next few years and it was so obvious that he was dealing with it in just the right way, bravely and without fuss, tackling it head on, even though he was probably going through hell with the treatment.  It is a tribute to Dave that he managed to combine his delayed third year at uni with cancer treatment and still come out with a 2.1.  When I think about Dave now I just believe it was so unfair that he had his life cut short in this way - that anyone does.  I know Cancer Research helped and supported Dave a lot over those years, especially through funding the hospice he visited.  His was also a rare cancer for which there is no cure, so further research is of course vital.  So this swim is for Dave and it spurs us on, when training and knackered, to think of what he must have gone through, and how the fact we are worn out and want to stop is nothing in comparison.  But more than that it is also for the too high number of people we know or have known that have also suffered with cancer and who motivate us every bit as much in the same way.