Coffee Morning for Reachout & Other Good News

The story so far is pretty positive; I’ve finished nine marathons so far with the tenth due on Saturday, with no injuries to report. But more importantly, €1,384 has been raised so far for Reach Out, which is slightly over 25% of our target. With that in mind, the third fundraising event of the year will be a coffee morning held at St Brigid’s Hall, Dunleer, Co. Louth at 10.30am next Friday.

Directions can be found here http://goo.gl/maps/49QR

Also if you’re on Facebook, I have it setup as a public event, please invite your friends, even if it’s just to make them aware of Reach Out. All support is very much appreciated. http://on.fb.me/NbobmL

By the way, the good news I mentioned in the title? Very soon, I’ll be contributing articles for runireland.com, which is Ireland’s biggest running website and attracts 400,000 unique visitors per year. Naturally, I’m very excited about this and hope that it will the campaign gain even more momentum. There’s a lot to be positive about today!

Waterford Viking Marathon

4:58am, June 30, 2011

Woo! T-minus a couple of minutes till I have to drag my groggy head out of bed, and pretty soon I’ll be drinking enough coffee to kill a small hippo (Editor’s note: Don’t kill hippos, they’re endangered). I feel a familiar twinge in my left shin – a souvenir from the Midnight Marathon in Leixlip – my right heel feels like a brick and I know it will so much worse after this is over.

The Waterford Viking Marathon is on today. It’s the first time Waterford has hosted a full-length marathon and there should be around 1,000 runners on the course today. For me, it’s number nine of the year, nearly halfway through the Running for Reachout challenge.

5.45am-8.00am, June 30, 2011

More coffee, a couple of bagels and a lucozade later, and I’m on the road from Louth to Waterford. I feel like I should be more pumped up, but it’s spilling rain on the M1 and unfortunately the only radio station I can pick up is 2FM, which is in the middle of its own marathon of moody angst-pop.

I guess listening to Alanis Morrisette while trying to get psyched up for a marathon could be considered Ironic…

Otherwise, the trip goes swimmingly; the weather eventually picks up and I’m making good time. My phone runs out of charge at a petrol station on the M9 and I find myself staring longingly at the blank screen, wondering if I’ve missed any important Facebook status updates. Hmmm, I think I have a problem…..

8.15-9.00am

The weirdest thing just happened! While getting changed at Waterford IT, I had two scoops of 4:1 High 5 all-in-one energy drink. Instantly, every pain and ache vanished; mere moments beforehand, I was concerned about being able to even finish, now I feel like I can run a sub 3-hour. It truly is the breakfast of champions!

And if you’d like me to shamelessly plug YOUR product, why not rattle off an email to runningforreachout@gmail.com?

We have a good gang in attendance from the 100 Marathon Club, making the short bus-trip from Waterford IT to the Mall. We arrive with just enough time to run through a last-minute checklist:

Gels & Gear ✓

Timing chip/number ✓

Garmin/heart-rate monitor ready ✓

With literally moments to go before we start, I’m told that iPods are banned from the race for safety reasons – looks like I have to spend the next few hours listening to my own feet cracking off the road. Dammit.

9:00am

And we’re off!! The first mile takes us on a loop past the Custom House quays and back again. Everyone’s still pretty comfortable and chatty; topics of conversation include next year’s Tralee marathon, the upcoming 24 hour race in Bangor, just exactly how much of a wuss I was for pulling out of last week’s race in Salthill (the consensus was “a huge wuss”) and so on. After about two or three miles, most of the club members pull away. I keep going with Pat and Jimmy for the most of the first half. So far, so good.

10.40am

Then nearly halfway through, this happened.

At this point, once I hit the hill from hell, I’m slowing right down. I’m no longer keeping up with any of the 100 Club lads, both my feet are swollen, my shin feels like it has a stress fracture … and there’s still just over half the race still to come! By the time we get out off the country-roads and into Tramore, I’m running completely flat-footedly and have precious little mobility left in my ankles. The split times take a nose-dive.

I should mention that the 18-minute mile was when I met Deirdre from the Waterford sports injury clinic; she gave me a quick leg massage at the side of the road and loosened out my ankles. So at this point, I’ve basically given up. My quads are gone, I’ve gone from a shuffle to a walk and not even a particularly fast walk at that.

12.40pm

Then, like a damn mirage or some other manner of exhaustion-induced illusion, the 35-marathon man randomly pops up in front of me.

I could tell it was him because of the sustained hum in A flat.

That’s Alan Corcoran; I mentioned him once before on the blog because he just ran a 917-mile long lap of Ireland in aid of the Irish Heart Foundation, consisting of 35 marathons in 35 days. The Waterford Viking Marathon was his final marathon. And all kidding aside, he’s an amazing dude and you should definitely check out his campaign on his website and here on Facebook and Twitter.

So anyway, I look up and Alan’s randomly popped up a few metres in front of me. On the spot, I decided that if this guy could run and finish 35 consecutive marathons, I could stick with him for the last 5.2 miles (turned out to be nearly 5.4).

1.35pm

Which turned out not to be easy at all. At this stage, I had been contemplating perhaps walking 15-minute miles for the rest of the race. Meanwhile, Alan and the two guys on bicycles with him have other plans and are hauling ass, going ten minutes and under in the last stages. Gradually I loosen up slightly, and we start passing more and more guys until eventually we reached the RSC race-track and I …. well, got a bit of ahead of myself and stopped running at the entrance-gate, thinking it was the finish-line. Cue a mad 200-yard dash to the ACTUAL finish-line!

By the end of that, Alan was in SIGNIFICANTLY better shape than I was, somersaulting over line while I looked like I was just about to keel over it.

So ended a bloody hard day out in Waterford. So that’s nine marathons now completed and I’m looking forward to three weeks off until the Kennedy Kane MacArthur Centenary in Antrim. Well done to Liam Farrell (a fellow Drogheda & District AC member running on the day), the guys and girls from the 100 Club and of course Alan, who you can sponsor by checking out his donations page here. If you’d like to sponsor me, I have these fantastic little green buttons you can click on (cos I’m so techy!) And if you do, I will loudly proclaim your awesomeness from my twitter-hilltop!

Oliver started running marathons last March and has completed nine of them so far in aid of ReachOut – for more information about the work of ReachOut and the Inspire Foundation, check out their Website

Three is a Magic Number

Just back from a pretty epic long-weekend of marathon running. I ran three marathons back-to-back (Ballyhoura, Limerick and Belfast) on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, in aid of Reach Out Ireland. Huge thanks to:

* All the guys at Reach Out Ireland.

* My family for putting up with me.

* Everyone at the Drogheda & District AC and the Irish 100 Marathon Club.

* Everyone who sent me texts and messages of support on Facebook and Twitter.

* Everyone along the routes who gave me water, high-fives and jelly-babies!

* Everyone who sponsored me.

* Everyone else!

That makes seven marathons completed this year but there’s still a long way to go. I’ll have a full race report in a few days when I can move again… In the meantime, enjoy this number from Schoolhouse Rock!

Shoot-Out for Reach Out!

If you hang around on Twitter or Facebook, you might see me post this link up quite often. That leads to the mycharity.ie page I setup to raise money for Reach Out. Mycharity.ie is a website that faciliates donations to charities by creating fundraising pages, like the one I’ve setup for this marathon challenge. (Clicking on the little green buttons scattered throughout these posts also takes you directly to my fundraising page)

Recently however, I’ve also been trying to raise money in that magical weird world out there beyond the computer screen. Raising money without using the internet – surely impossible?

Luckily, my local Gaelic football club came to the rescue. To my friends reading from abroad, Gaelic football (also called GAA, Gah, or somtimes, Irish football) is sort of like a cross between soccer and rugby. It’s played on a large pitch with a round leather football that is like a soccer ball but heavier. At each end of the field is a goal that looks like an NFL goal post, except that under the crossbar is a net similar to a soccer net. Two teams try to score points by getting the ball into the net or over the crossbar. A ball that goes into the net is worth three points, while one that goes over the crossbar is worth one. That’s a fairly trite summation of my favourite sport but for those who haven’t seen it played before, this video should provide a pretty epic introduction.

Anyway, back to the fundraising! As I was saying, my local club Lannleire GFC came to my rescue last weekend. While I was away running in the Connemarathon on Sunday, Lannleire were playing local rivals St. Kevin’s GFC back in Louth. I owe a huge thanks to everybody involved as the gate receipts from that match were all donated to Reach Out Ireland. Also, last Saturday, the players in the youth development squad participated in a very successful fundraising penalty shootout!

Penalty-taking right out of the top drawer

Everybody took three shots, with those scoring all three progressing to the second round, where they fired off three more penalties. After about an hour, Donal Clare (pictured above) emerged the winner, scoring six out of six. More information and photos from the event (including a few of me trying to take a penalty and making a fool of myself) can be found here on Flickr and Facebook. And of course, we ended up raising €400 for Reach Out, bringing the total raised so far to €670, which is absolutely fantastic. Major thanks again to everyone that took part, it was a great day.

Also, the next marathon I’m running is the Madventure Marathon next Sunday. This event is my first trail run, it’s 100% off-road and involves hacking up and down the highest mountain in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland. Fun times! What I’d really like to hear though, is ideas that you guys might have for more offline fundraising events. I’m being absolutely serious, I only have maybe two or three other ideas! Maybe you shaved your head, jumped out of a plane or had a worm-charming event (yes, apparently that is actually a thing). Whatever it is, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

For more information on the work done by Reach Out, check out Reachout.com and InspireIreland.ie

Also, don’t forget that following ‘Running for Reachout’ on Facebook and Twitter is guaranteed to instantly make you 32% cooler.

Hello World! Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Running

“You’ve actually lost your mind.” my mam said. “Have you even thought this through?” The answer was, as always, that I had thought it through but perhaps not as much as I should have. The comments on Facebook shared the same broad theme: “Have you any idea what you’ve let yourself in for Oliver?” “Nice knowing you Ollie!” “Ehh, good luck? Madman…” The plan that elicited said response is fairly simple. Run a bunch of Irish marathons. Well, 20 of them actually. Within one year.

On the 10th of March 2012, I’ll begin by running in the ‘”West of Ireland’ series of marathons, which starts at Maam Cross in Connemara. This will kick-start a string of runs that will hopefully end slightly over nine months later with the Clonakilty Marathon and the end of the ‘West of Ireland’ series in December. Along the way, there will be a somewhat strenuous period in May during which I’ll be running six marathons, including three in as many days at the beginning of the month (Ballyhoura, Limerick and Belfast).

Further details will be posted up over the coming months on this blog as well as on Facebook, Twitter, Mycharity.ie and YouTube (if I can just figure out how to edit video!). This endeavour is naturally in aid of a very good cause indeed, namely to raise funding for Reachout.com (Inspire Ireland Foundation) which is a charitable organisation providing assistance and information on mental health to young people, helping them to lead happier lives. In their own words:

The Inspire Ireland Foundation is part of a network of charitable organisations that aims to improve young people’s mental health and well-bring through online services. It’s flagship programme is ReachOut.com, an online service that helps young people through tough times. It’s a quality mental health information site that is a safe and confidential space where young people can go and access information if they are worried about themselves or a friend going through a tough time. Inspire Ireland delivers several other key programmes including PleaseTalk, a college and higher education initiative that promotes the message that talking is a sign of strength while also providing an online directory of support services for students, and Get on Board, an advocacy campaign that aims to get youth mental health on the political agenda.

More information can be found at www.inspireireland.ie or by contacting nigel@inspireireland.ie