The Challenge...32 Marathons, 32 Counties, 32 Days
Gerry and Ken's Blog...

Some photos, comments and updates from each day's marathon are up on our Facebook page! Check it out here...

Marathon 14 - Kildare

Another super day today and we’re getting close to our half-way point. 20 great people joined us for the run and a lovely 4 lap route around the grounds of NUI Maynooth and Carton House. The race was started by the current Rose of Tralee, Charmaine Kenny, who not only has helped us greatly with PR over the last few months, she donned her runners today and ran 13.1 miles – great performance. It was also great to see Bernard Flynn and Tommy Carr at the start line too.

Today was a day for breaking records; Peter Mooney completed the 26.2 miles in 3 hours and 7 minutes - Our support were given a bit of a laugh as Freddie Grehan, our event organizer, tried to chase him down as he was on his cool-down run back to his car to give him his medal; poor Freddie couldn’t catch him and had to turn around red-checked and panting. Padraic Corcoran finished the half marathon in 1:42, and not to be outdone, our bionic man Gerry ran his fastest marathon of the last 14 days, completing the distance in 4:15.

Twin brothers, John and Brian Keegan deserve a special mention – Brian actually flew over especially from London for the marathon today. Also, a special well done to John Conroy who completed his first full marathon today on his 35th birthday. He was hoping to come in under the 4:15 mark, and beat it by a minute.

I (KW) had great company the whole way from Sharon and Douglas Bates, Brendan Doyle, my brother Barry and Máirtin Savage, along with Carly Ferguson from our Northern Ireland team who was getting in a solid training run before her Fermanagh marathon on the 27th. Gerry also had great company in the form of his brother Tom Duffy, Colin Telford, and once again we were all delighted to see his extended family cheering everybody on.

I crossed the line in 5:12 , a little slower then yesterday, due to a few niggles, but nothing I am overly worried about. On the physio table after the marathon, I asked Maura, our Chartered Physio for the day, how Gerry was holding up – she smiled and said “Any random man on the street would have more tightness in his legs than Gerry does after running 14 consecutive marathons” – The man is a legend!

We are heading for Birr in Co. Offaly, where we have a great sign up of over 60 runners. We are all looking forward to a good day.

< Back to main Blog page >