The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
A SHANNON man is preparing for the toughest foot race in the world through the Sahara Desert to raise awareness and funds for sudden adult death syndrome treatment.
Matthew Halpin will take on the six-day, 250km Marathon Des Sables through the famous desert where he will potentially face 50 degree temperatures.
It’s happening in April and Matthew is doing it to commemorate his late friend Kevin Hayes, and to raise funds for Heart House, which is a free family heart screening clinic at the Mater in Dublin.
Thirty-two years of age, Matthew now works for MeiraGTx and moved back to Shannon last October after a decade in Cork.
Speaking about his late friend Kevin, he says, “I was in college with him in UL, I did industrial chemistry, he did industrial biochemistry. In UL you go on work placement in third year and we
were both placed in Eli Lily in Cork, we lived together down there. We really bonded because I love to eat and he liked to cook!
“I couldn’t peel a potato or work a washing machine, but he taught me how to cook, we used to watch MasterChef and get all these notions! That’s where the friendship was forged.”
They remained very close even after finishing their degrees, but Matthew was stunned when he got a call in June of 2017 to say his friend had passed away.
“You hear about these type of things on the news, people dying on pitches and stuff, but it’s so strange someone dying at that age, so sudden and unexpected.”
It later emerged that the cause of death was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, which claims the lives of two young people every week in Ireland.
Because Matthew had health insurance through his job, in time he was able to get screened for SADs, while Heart House, the charity he is raising funds for, provide screening for people who can’t afford it.
“Detection is crucial. I think county GAA teams have to do it but it’s probably not there at club level. With so many people playing sport for a bit longer than they used to, it’s always good to have that available and the service they provide is really good. All the people involved in Heart House give up their free time to do it.”
Matthew has played a variety of sports, favouring basketball while he has also played rugby for St Senan’s and clubs in Cork.
While the Marathon Des Sables was on his radar for a while, it was only while recovering from a serious injury that he decided to enter.
“When I first started working in Johnson &Johnson a couple of lads there had done it, there were about 1,500 people there and I didn’t know them, but everyone was kind of talking about it and I said ‘that sounds mad, I’d love to do it’.
“But because I was playing so much sport I couldn’t commit to the training. Before Covid I did my cruciate, I was rehabbing for that, and I had to make a conscious decision to go back to sport or not, and I started training for this last January. I’ve been training for it for about a year.”
He aims to finish in the top 30 of about 1,500, a goal he says himself and his trainer Donnacha Long feel is achievable given the training he has done and his performances to date.
But how will someone from Shannon cope with running in 50 degree heat?
“One of the positive things about Covid was that I was able to work from home in my last role and I spent all of last August in Spain doing some heat acclimation. It was 44 degrees, so it was pretty close.
“That was a struggle for the first week or two, but then you acclimatise to it. It’s still not like walking around in 22 degrees, but it gets a lot easier.”
He says that hydration is the key to dealing with the heat and his nutrionist Evan Lynch has helped him with it.
At the moment Matthew is running 100-120km per week, including three-hour runs at the weekends.
He ran a 50km ultramarathon in Wales last year coming sixth, and he is pleased with how his body has coped with all the punishment.
“My knee has held up a lot better than I thought it would, hopefully I’m not jinxing myself.”
While at an extremely high level of fitness already, he plans to shed some weight close to race time.
“I’m 76kg now, I’ll probably be going down to 72 before the race. You have to carry everything you’re going to use for this race and my backpack is about 6.5kg, and then with water, that’s another 1.5, so you’re talking 8kg for the six days. If I can take four kilos off me it’ll feel like carrying a 4kg backpack.”
He says his loved ones have been very supportive, even if his conversation is limited to running now. “Everyone is sick of me talking about it, I suppose!”
Running around Shannon on wet January evenings isn’t for everyone, but he has no problem getting motivated.
“You think about your reason why, and that needs to be strong. Why am I doing this, I’m not doing it for myself, I’m doing it to raise awareness of SADs, I’m doing it to remember a good friend. You’ve got to keep that clarity in your mind. Last night it was pouring rain and the wind was howling and I did 14km in an hour. You just have to get it done. You’d be looking out the window and thinking my friend can’t do this now, so I need to do it.”
It’s provoking a lot of interest, which converts into support for his chosen charity.
“A lot of people ask me about it, my friends are intrigued by it, everybody wants to know how you’re getting on and they tell their friends. I went out at Christmas, I didn’t drink but everyone was saying I hear you’re doing a mad race in the desert, what’s that about, and then people were donating to the GoFundMe. I’ll talk about it all day if it adds to the cause.”
Donations can be made at Gofundme under ‘Support for Heart House for SADS testing’.
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked for a number of other regional titles in Limerick, Galway and Cork.
