Omagh duo make it from Belfast2Dublin

TWO Omagh endurance athletes completed the gruelling Belfast2Dublin Ultra Marathon at the weekend.

Jill McCann, who was the winner of the Belfast2Dublin and Back race a few years ago and just a few weeks after running over 180 miles in ‘The Tunnel’ completed the event in 28 hours, as did Paul Kelly, who breached the 100-mile mark for the first time in his running career on the back of just three weeks preparation.

Kelly, who helped with the timing at McCann’s 48 hour race at Youth Sport Omagh in March and who helped her get to and from Bath for The Tunnel, had thought he would be on another watching brief at the weekend, crewing for Jill, but his friend had other ideas.

“Jill bought this for me as a present, she’s a great wee woman!,” he said with a laugh.

“The whole thing happened because someone had given her an entry, they couldn’t do it. I don’t know why because I never asked, but I knew if she was going to do it she’d need someone to crew her but instead of crewing her she decided I may as well do it with her.”

Having been out of action since last summer when he completed around 70 to 80 miles in something like 16 hours during a round of the Last One Standing Four Nations Championship in Northumberland, to say Paul was under-prepared is something of an understatement.

But spurred on by his daughters, eight-year-old Meabh, whose Holy Communion he hobbled through on Sunday, and 11-year-old Caoimhe, Paul gritted his teeth and dug deep to not only break the 100 mile mark for the first time, but complete what was his toughest challenge to date.

And for someone who has completed the Fire and Ice Challenge in Iceland, that’s saying something.

“It was my first run since July of last year,” he explained. “I’m a chimney sweep, so I’m flat out from September through so this was my first run back.

“After a couple of hours it started to sink in and I said ‘we’ll go and do 50 miles and we’ll see how we get on’ because I had three weeks to train.

“I was in that much pain, I was suffering for about the last 10 to 12 hours, it was horrendous.

“But what kept me going was stubbornness – I’m here and I’m doing it – and before I left I got my two daughters to write things like ‘you can do this’ in permanent marker on my hands.

“And I just kept thinking of them, I couldn’t go home without doing it. I wanted to show them you can push yourself past where you want to give up. When you think life has got you down, it’s a great way to show how much you can endure before you have to give up. A lot of people give up too quick.”

In the immediate aftermath of the Belfast2Dublin, with exhaustion all encompassing, Kelly decided to retire from ultra running and take up something more sedate. But within a couple of days, he’s probably decided against that idea.

“I’m going to take up crochet!,” he joked. “But who only knows, maybe I’ll tackle the Ring of Kerry next because the thing about that is that it’s all trails, so it’s not as sore on the joints as tarmac and concrete, which was the real killer.”