Long-distance runner Catherine O'Regan, who has just turned 74, hopes to have completed her 100th marathon by October, writes EOIN BURKE-KENNEDY
SOME PEOPLE seem intent on defying the limits of age. Take Catherine (Kay) O’Regan from Enniscorthy, who, last October, completed her 95th marathon at the age of 73.
Not content with that milestone, she plans to reach her 100th by running five more this year, starting later this month with the Connemara marathon.
Her ambitious plan will then see her take part in a series of city marathons, starting with Belfast in May, followed by Cork in June, Berlin in September and finally Dublin in October.
It’s an exceptional thing to be running such distances in your 70s but attempting five in the space of several months is surely remarkable.
And O’Regan is no mere back number content to walk or jog around the 26 miles – her average time for the distance, as a septuagenarian, is under four and a half hours.
She has a best time of three hours 35 minutes achieved in Melbourne in 1994 at the tender age of 58.
“You get short-distance runners and you get long-distance runners, and I guess I’m of the long-distance variety. It just doesn’t seem to take too much out of me,” she says.
“I find getting out in the fresh air very therapeutic, better than any medicine.”
O’Regan trains up to five times a week around the back roads of Enniscorthy, often in the company of other runners from her beloved Slaney Olympic Athletic Club.
At the time we spoke, she had just completed a 17-mile run with a 40-year-old clubmate who is training for an ultra marathon, and intends to run a half marathon the following day.
So how did this love affair with distance running begin?
When living in the UK in the 1980s, her son began running while studying for his A-levels.
One night she rebuked him for not going because it was raining. He responded by suggesting the next time she join him.
“And that’s how it all started,” she says.
Several months later she completed her first half marathon before going on to finish her first full marathon in London at the age of 50.
She ran that first marathon in four hours and 40 minutes with her husband Joe, who incidentally also runs marathons, but has only completed a paltry 26 of them.
From that modest beginning, she rapidly developed into a serious competitor, running marathons and half marathons all over the world and slashing her personal best times for the distances along the way.
When asked if she regretted not starting at a younger age when she might have made the ranks of the elite, O’Regan is typically sanguine: “Not really. You can burn out quickly at that level. I probably wouldn’t be running today if I had run at that level in my youth.”
The high point remains her performance in the notoriously gruelling Isle of Man marathon in 1998, where she was the first woman home.
One of the more exotic ones, she says, was the midnight sun marathon in Norway where competitors start at 10pm and run through the so-called white night.
O’Regan says she had no experience of running prior to taking it up at the age 49 but had always kept fit and active through playing badminton and squash.
“It was just a natural fit for me. I’m really not sure what attracted me to it in the first place. But I’d hate to have to stop.”
Asked what her doctor thinks of her running, she says: “I think he’s secretly quite proud that he has a runner of my age on his books. There’s no secret to running at my age, I’m just lucky I can do it.”
O’Regan holds the course record for the Dublin City marathon in the over-60 age category, the over-65 category and the over-70 category.
She is planning an assault on the over-75s course record but grudgingly admits she is still too young to qualify, having only just turned 74.
“I tend to win my age group in a lot of runs but there are so few of us, I usually have to take my chances with the 60 year olds.”
She hasn’t changed her training for this year’s five-marathon bid. “I’ve done a few longer runs in training but it’s really just about staying fresh and injury free.”
Her son and his college friends, now incidentally in their 50s, plan to run the Dublin marathon next October to honour the occasion of O’Regan’s 100th marathon, should she complete the other four. It will be her son’s first.
So does she intend to retire from competitive running anytime soon?
“I have no intention of packing up. As long as I am able to walk, I hope to be able to run.”
CATHERINE'S 2010 SCHEDULE
April 11th: Ron Hill Connemarathon
connemarathon.com
May 3rd: Deep RiverRock Belfast City Marathon
belfastcitymarathon.com
June 7th: Bord Gais Energy Cork City Marathon
corkcitymarathon.ie
September 26th: Berlin Marathon
berlin-marathon.com
October 25th: Lifestyle Sports-adidas Dublin Marathon – dublinmarathon.ie