FAMILY TIES Mark Scanlon and his sister Neasa are pictured after the Sydney Marathon.
Record Breaker Mark Scanlon has just run seven marathons on seven continents in seven months Daniel Carey ABOUT two hours and 20 minutes after Kenyan John Kelai took first place in the 2008 Mumbai Marathon, a large group of athletes and spectators gathered at the finish line. They were there to applaud the efforts of a man from Attymass, Ballina, who had just become the youngest man in history to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven months.
Mark Scanlon flew into Dublin Airport last Sunday, seven days on from completing an epic journey that took in 26-mile races in San Francisco, Longford, Sydney, Nairobi, Buenos Aires and the Antarctic before the Indian city formerly known as Bombay. The 24-year-old undertook the ‘777 Challenge’ to raise money for the Irish Cancer Society, a cause dear to his heart as his father Kieran died from the disease in 1999. His mother Ann was at the finish line in Mumbai to greet him, as were a whole host of locals.
“I had been talking to a few of the Indian lads beforehand, and some of them had waited at the finish line. One of the reporters I had met made everybody cheer when I was coming in. The finish was amazing. We stood and took pictures, and after seven months, just to finish it was just a great feeling. My mother was standing beside me for a photo and I thought my father would be proud.”
Scanlon had suffered a recurrence of an old ankle injury in the run-up to the race, and coupled with the heat (which eventually reached 31 degrees), it wasn’t an easy run. Not that there was any question of him pulling up early. “A bit of heat or a sore ankle wasn’t going to stop me!”
He and his mum flew via Heathrow, departing the London airport approximately an hour before a British Airways plane crash-landed short of the runway. Having avoided the delays that followed that incident, they arrived in India and he was careful to avoid a bout of the food poisoning he had suffered in Kenya – “I wasn’t going to be responsible for getting my mother sick, whatever about me!” he laughs. He found the country ‘fantastic’, saying that India was ‘such an energetic and cool place’ that he could forgive the chaos, ‘insane’ city traffic and pollution he experienced.
The small but important matter of race registration was only sorted out the day before – Scanlon hadn’t registered and was refused entry ‘the first 20 times’ he asked race organisers. Eventually the officials gave in (“I told them I was going to be there for the day if they didn’t agree!”) so his journey halfway across the world wasn’t in vain. Twenty-four hours later, those responsible for registration were ‘jumping around the place’ in delight as he came to the finish line.
A week on, he and Ann finally arrived back in Dublin Airport, where they were greeted by Mark’s sister Donna, who came with an Irish flag and a pint of Guinness. “I hadn’t seen a pint in the last seven months, and Donna had said last July that she’d buy me one when I had it finished,” he explained. RTÉ cameras were also on hand to record the occasion, and there have been plenty of media engagements since.
The highlight of his globe-trotting came in the Antarctic in December, running the Ice Marathon in a blizzard which reduced visibility to almost zero. A scientist working down there had told Scanlon that the Antarctic was ‘the continent that wants to kill you’, and at the moment, the Irishman knew what he meant. Unsurprisingly, his lowest point came in between the two marathons he ran in the space of a week (in Kenya and Argentina). He had neglected to wear sun cream while running in Africa, and upon arrival at Heathrow Airport, he found blood had soaked through his sunburnt shoulders onto his white t-shirt. He ‘stopped counting’ after finding his 70th mosquito bite, and was facing a ten-hour flight and a night in Sao Paolo Airport before he could be reunited with his luggage. Dressed in ‘filthy’ clothes and with his face ‘peeling from sunburn’, it was little wonder that ‘everybody was avoiding looking’ directly at him!
“I’d have loved to have got on a short flight back to Dublin at that stage!” he laughs. “But there was no question I was going to stop. If you have a very specific goal, especially when it’s a cause like that, then logistics or people not registering you or flight mix-ups or sore ankles isn’t going to stop you.” Would a broken leg have called a halt to his gallop? Scanlon replies with a smile: “If I had to get the crutches out, it was going to happen anyway!” He found himself thinking about his father a lot, and about the Irish Cancer Society, and was bowled over by people’s response to the challenge.
“I’ve had people e-mailing me through the [web]site, people I don’t know. I met a guy in Dublin Airport as I was flying out who had read about me and just wanted to say ‘good luck’ and see if he could do anything. People that I haven’t seen in six years were getting back in contact to see if they could help out. It’s incredible how supportive Irish people are when you’re doing something.”
Surely he’s entitled to a holiday now?
“You must be joking!” he laughs. “I can’t afford to go on holiday! I’m back to work this morning [Monday] since half eight and I really have to get a lot of work done over the next couple of weeks. But I still have a good bit of fund-raising to do. We’ve just over €20,000 now and we’ve a couple of events coming up. Hopefully we’ll get some more donations in before we wrap this up. The target is still €50,000, so I’ll just have to think how we’re going to get to the rest of it. I’m certainly not going to be doing seven continents all over again, but something in the same line wouldn’t be out of the question.”
Watch this space.
See www.777challenge.com to donate to the campaign.
