A TOTAL of 665 women have already signed up for the Race for Life, which was officially launched in Skipton this week.

This is the first year that the women-only charity event has come to Skipton and organisers are hoping that 1,000 women will take part around the course at Broughton Hall Business Park on June 8.

The five kilometre or 3.1 mile walk or run will be held in 135 venues across the country from Aberdeen to the Channel Islands with around 300,000 women of all ages and fitness abilities participating.

Tesco are the main nationwide sponsors of the event and the Craven Herald is among the local sponsors All the funds raised through sponsorship of participants in the race will be donated to Cancer Research UK, which is the single biggest supporter of UK research into children's cancer and the major funder of breast cancer research, spending more than £15 million on the disease this year alone.

However, the charity receives virtually no funding from the Government and it has to rely on voluntary donations and events such as Race for Life to make its life saving work possible.

This year's fundraising target is £17.5 million. A total of £15 million has so far been collected from last year's race with money still to come in.

All the funds raised from the event will help to reduce statistics such as one in three people in the UK will get cancer at some point in their lifetime and one in four will die from the disease.

More than 130,000 women are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK and one in nine women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some time in their lives.

Several local teams have already entered the race including a team from Skipton Police Station aptly named "Cops and Blobbers".

Organiser Detective Constable Sue Marklew told the Herald that a 28-strong team of police officers, support staff and friends were currently in training for the race.

They have decided take part in the event in memory of Lucy Moore, the daughter of Detective Inspector Mick Moore and his wife Bridget, who lost her six-year battle against cancer at the age of 11 in August last year.

Seven reporters from the Craven Herald have also entered the race to commemorate the paper's 150th anniversary, along with several of their friends.

The course will be run (or walked) on a combination of grass, road and tracks. Some tracks have an uneven surface. The course is fairly undulating in parts with fine views of the Yorkshire Dales.

Anyone still fancies entering the race can call the Race for Life hotline number on 08705 134314 or visit the website at www.raceforlife.co.uk