76-year-old defies the years with swim, cycle, walk and horse ride

A Ballinasloe resident has celebrated her 76th birthday with a swim, cycle, walk and horse ride over 7.6 miles – all completed in well under the 7.6 hour-target.

Rachel Woollett underwent the challenge as a personal feat to celebrate her birthday while also raising funds for the Ballinasloe Social Services Day Care Centre, where her husband gets treatment one day a week.

As a lifelong horse enthusiast, with four horses currently kept on her twelve acres of land situated six miles outside the town, Rachel found the most difficult part of the endurance test to be the swimming.

“I horse ride all the time, I walked with a neighbour who was walking as part of her therapy and I’ve done a bit of cycling but I put in quite a lot of work for the swimming – 64 lengths of the pool was very tedious,” she explained.

In total she swam one mile, cycled four miles, walked another mile and horse rode 1.6 miles – all in six hours, 17 minutes, easily beating her target.

In the process she has raised €1,000 for the centre, where her husband 85-year-old Wilf – the retired vet and hot hair balloonist – has been exercising after suffering a stroke.

“They’re very nice, very helpful. They’ve got a cycling machine and also have a machine for strengthening his upper body. He can walk with a rollator so he’s good.”

Rachel got her first pony when she was three. For many years she worked as huntservant, looking after hounds and horses. She then worked part-time as a photojournalist for equestrian and field sports publications, including The Irish Field and the Farmer’s Journal.

She still submits a monthly article to the UK magazine, Countrymen’s Weekly, just to keep heart and mind active.

This is also not her first physical challenge.

For her 70th birthday she did a horse ride for 70 miles in one day, raising €3,000 for cancer research.

As for her next challenge, the sky’s the limit.

“I haven’t thought of one yet. I did go over to London last summer and cycled ten miles around London when they had all the traffic stopped, just bikes and pedestrians. You get to go past all the monuments; they should really do one of those over here.”