How do you support yourself and others after the shock of a cancer diagnosis? If you’re Jackie Scully (2000, English), you appear on national TV on your wedding day before taking on a series of astonishing challenges.
Jackie Scully on her trek in the Sahara (left) and in her record-breaking 10-person London bus costume during the 2024 London Marathon (right).
It’s fair to say the past decade has not been quiet for Jackie Scully. During that time, she has run the London Marathon three times (including once on her wedding day [to Duncan Sloan (2000, Mathematics)] and once as part of the fastest team ever to complete a marathon in a ten-person costume, alongside Fran Walker (Sykes, 2000, Biochemistry)). She has trekked across the Sahara. She has taken part in the world’s longest continuous spinning class, spending over 29 hours on a stationary gym bike. And she has conquered 24 of the Lake District’s tallest peaks in a little under 48 hours.
In completing this succession of extraordinary challenges, Jackie has raised over £160,000 for charity. And perhaps the most extraordinary detail of all? The idea to begin fundraising came to her as she sat in a hospital chair in 2014, receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer.
“I basically vowed there and then to turn my situation into something positive,” Jackie says with a smile. “I vowed that I would raise £100,000 for charity within the next ten years.”
Finding hope through running
Jackie’s cancer diagnosis came as a particular blow because it followed years of health struggles that began soon after she left LMH. “I had my pelvis rebuilt in my twenties,” she says. “I left university and a few years later I was struggling to walk. I ended up needing surgery on my pelvis and had hoped that my thirties would by my decade. And then, at 32, I got breast cancer. At that stage I just felt, ‘OK, either my health issues are going to control my life or I’m going to take control.’”
Jackie began running during her cancer treatment. “It got me out into the fresh air,” she says, “and it was such a good discipline, as long as you accept that some days you won’t be able to do it and some days you’ll start and it will be awful.” She completed a 10km race, which she now describes as “one of the most amazing days of my life,” and decided to begin, “attaching big, big life moments to running and seeing where it took me”.
A bride on the BBC
One of the first places it took her was to the Cutty Sark, an iconic landmark on the London Marathon route, at 7.20am on the day of the race. While most runners were trying to calm their nerves and tucking into a nutritious breakfast, Jackie was getting married in a specially-made wedding dress that would later double up as her running gear.
Celebrating in this way presented a range of unusual challenges. For example, it’s forbidden to take the marriage register on public transport, but all of the surrounding roads were closed in preparation for the marathon. After much negotiation, Jackie and the registrar found a way to get the book close enough to the Cutty Sark by car and then carry it on board. The ship is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which meant Jackie and Duncan needed to use a specific fine art photographer.
But, with these and other obstacles overcome, the wedding went ahead as planned, and Jackie was interviewed for the BBC by Gabby Logan, her story clearly striking a chord with many people lining the route. “Because of that exposure, everyone knew we were coming,” Jackie laughs. “I remember this tiny girl with a little card that she’d written that said, ‘Go bride!’ on it. She shouted at the top of her voice, ‘The bride is coming! The bride is coming!’”
Fundraising is just the beginning
As befits a former English student, Jackie has “always been a storyteller”. She realised early in her fundraising odyssey that she needed her challenges to stand out. And, as time passed, she also recognised how her story could motivate others. Dozens of people have contacted her to say she inspired them to begin exercising. And as she ran a 10km race in 2024 to mark ten years since she first covered the distance, and ten years cancer-free, 120 people across the country joined her to “run, jog, walk or crawl” 10km themselves.
Last year Jackie was nominated for a Pride of Britain Award. As part of the TV coverage, she thanked the cancer nurse who inspired her fundraising by asking her, ‘What are you doing that you would be proud to put on your gravestone?’
And that question has been Jackie’s mantra ever since. Having started the year feeling like a “minister without portfolio" after completing her ten-year challenge, she is already back training. With a 10k swim coming up in November and her sights set on a full ironman triathlon and a Mount Kilimanjaro trek next year, Jackie shows no signs of slowing down, continuing to not only raise funds, but also inspire others into action.
“You never know what your actions can do to help somebody,” Jackie says. “I’m not an athlete in any sense, but I turn up and try, and I think that’s helped people turn up and try in their own lives. If that’s the legacy that I can leave for people, then I’ve done my job.”
This is an updated version of an article that first appeared in LMH News 2025. You can read the full issue on our publications page.
