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Humans of TU Delft: Joost Ziere

With the aim of raising EUR 20,000 for cancer research, master’s student Joost Ziere and seven friends will be cycling the Alps in June.

Joost Ziere: “We’ve all lost someone to cancer in the past.” (Photo: Heather Montague)

“It started about a year ago when one of my very close friends was diagnosed with cancer. He’s the same age as I am so it was kind of a blow. Luckily it was treatable and he’s now free of cancer, but I started thinking that everyone is confronted with cancer in some way and I thought there was a good opportunity to give something back.


I contacted some other friends and got the ball rolling and then the Alpe d’HuZes came to mind. One of my friends had done it already so it was a quick decision to do it and to put a team together. We ended up with a team of eight. Three of us are currently studying at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and two have already graduated, also from this faculty. We all knew each other already and three other friends also joined to raise as much money as we can. Our goal is to raise EUR 20,000. The event is on 4 June so we have about four and a half months left to raise the money. But we can still continue to raise money even after the event.


‘I’ve never tackled an Alp before’


For the event, we’re training to do the course up and down six times, which is the maximum you can do. But that’s really tough, so we’re trying to get as prepared as possible. If you complete all six it’s around 180 km with 6,000 metres in height difference so it’s intense.


In the summer when the weather is good, we go to the Ardennes or Maastricht or the hills of Limburg to train, to get some experience with hills. But it’s not easy around here. During the winter we do spinning at X and we just have to crank the resistance to the highest level. It’s hard to simulate climbing. I’ve never tackled an Alp before, so it’s the first time I’ll be doing a mountain like this.


It’s challenging, but this is a way to give something back. We’ve all lost someone to cancer in the past so we thought we have to do something to make a difference.”


  • Click here if you would like to help Joost and his team reach their goal.


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Heather Montague / Freelance writer

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