Journalist Daisy Dumas will be running the Sydney Marathon on September 17 to raise awareness of FTD, the disease her mother lived with until her death in 2020.

On a website she launched to document her training, A Marathon a Week, Dumas writes that her mother began showing signs of FTD when she was in her 50s. She developed “strange spending habits, lost her inhibitions and was occasionally aggressive,” Dumas writes. “As the disease progressed, the damage to her brain led to incontinence and the total loss of mobility.

“I live with a high risk of developing the same disease,” she continues. “I’m 42, which means I may have just a decade or so of cognitive health left. Running a marathon is a small way to contribute to vital research funds that may change that trajectory.”

In addition to creating greater awareness of FTD, Dumas is running the Sydney Marathon to raise money for the Australian Fronto-Temporal Dementia Association.

Dumas — a former senior editor at the Sydney Morning Herald and features editor for the London Evening Standard — says on her website that she is working on a book about FTD.