Jelle (16) from Sprundel lost both parents in a few years. When he was asked to walk the Roparun, a running relay where money is collected for people with cancer, Jelle never hesitated for a moment. “My father ran the run for my mother, I now run him for both.”
It is now almost a year ago that his team will participate early. Since then he has started training and this Whitsun weekend, as one of the youngest participants, he participated in the 540 kilometer relay run. He took 65: “That is one and a half marathon,” he says proudly. “That really isn’t nothing.”
“I hope mum and dad have watched from above.”
With the run, more than three million euros has been raised, money that is used to make the lives of people with cancer more bearable. “In 2021 my mother was told that she had metastatic breast cancer and would not get better,” says Jelle. His father suddenly died a year later, due to a heart attack while running. In 2023 his mother died of cancer. “I now live with my older sister in our parental home.”
The trip was not easy for Jelle: “It was fun, but also tiring,” he says. The relay run goes day and night. “Especially walking at night, I thought it was tough,” says Jelle. “I walked on a long, hopeless road in the dark, the courage really fell into my shoes.” It helped him to think about why he participated: “I thought of my father, that he has also finished the journey and can never walk him again. And to my mother, who fought against this terrible disease for three years. That gave me strength to continue,” he says. “I hope they watched and be proud from above.”
“We are so proud of him, this is an experience for life.”
In any case, he himself is: “Yes, I am proud that I finished it. The team was also really fun and a big, necessary support at times.” Dirk, the leader of Roparunteam SV Sprundel, and friend of his deceased parents, is at least huge: “I have known him since he did his pants,” he says winking to Jelle, who grins in the background.
“I have always talked a lot about the Roparun with his father,” says Dirk, who has been a volunteer for years. “For him, Jelles’s disease was an important motivation to walk at that time. Now Jelle got the chance to do this for his parents, and that gives an indescribable feeling,” he says emotionally.
The money from the Roparun goes to a hospice in the Sprundel area, among other things. The Roparun and the story of Jelle lives in the village; “It is worn enormously here, we are so proud of Jelle. This is an experience for life.”
Make a donation to the Roparun For Jelle is still possible