Long-distance runner crosses continents for Galway Hospice

A Loughrea man who only took up running four years ago ran two marathons in a week on two continents and raised a phenomenal €21,000 for the Galway Hospice.

Mark Moran ran the Dublin Marathon last October 31 and travelled across the Atlantic to run the New York Marathon six days later. The 34-year-old engineer funded both events himself to ensure that all donations collected went directly to the hospice.

He chose the facility after his own mother Teresa Moran availed of the service two decades ago when she was dying from cancer at age 45. At the time Mark was 13 years old.

Mark, who works at Penn Engineering in Mervue in the city, decided to do something really special to mark the twentieth anniversary of her death.

In total, he raised €21,415 for the Galway Hospice’s home care, day care and bereavement support services, which cost €1.8 million to provide.

To drum up donations, he held a giant raffle in McNamees Bar in Loughrea for which 42 prizes were donated. He held other auctions with donations of signed and framed Connacht Rugby jerseys.

“I’m still a bit in shock. I’m so thrilled, couldn’t be happier with how it all went. At the start of it, if I had raised half that amount I would have been happy.

“The support I got from family and friends was amazing. Fundraising manager Joanne Tierney was phenomenal. She just kept pushing me to do more and I thought this is something I’ll do once, I might as well do it right,” he exclaimed.

“The running was actually the easy bit. Collecting the books, tracking the numbers – it was a busy eight or nine months alright.”

Four years ago, Mark started running as a way of getting out of the house on the dark evenings. He started off doing 5k and 8k challenging, slowly building up to his first marathon last year in Dublin.

Nowadays he runs three times a week, although in training he upped that to five times a week with two circuit training classes.

And then there was the nightly dip in Loughrea lake to help with the recovery process.

He clocked a personal best time of three hours, 37 minutes in the Dublin marathon which boasted the biggest ever entry for 2016. When he set off for New York he knew he had more left in the can.

“There were 50,000 running it and over a million spectators – the skyline as you run makes you feel your head is in the clouds. There are live bands performing every mile – from gospel, heavy metal, opera, pop – outside pubs, people’s houses, my ears were just ringing with the buzz. It was definitely one of the best experiences in my life.” He hit a time of three hours, 53 minutes.

He was touched by all the personal stories retold to him while organising the events. So many people across the city and county have had their own brush with the Galway Hospice and are just so willing to help, he stresses.

“I definitely have a connection with the hospice now, in the future I may become a volunteer there. It’s the most happy place, which I know is an unusual thing to say. There’s no such thing as ‘no’ in there. When you see all they do. It’s like a big family in there.”