Tag Archives: Dublin marathon

With a Little Help—and Celebration—from Our Friends

24 Saturday Oct 2026

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Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
Cicero

This week’s news are a little longer than usual. There is —

  • The Coffee Morning on 31 October at 11, organised by our neighbours.
  • The news about Pádraig’s impressive improvements: writing, walking, and doing squats.
  • Tommy’s call for support. He will be running the Dublin Marathon raising funds for the An Saol Foundation (again).
  • Become a Friend of An Saol, invite 10 of your friends to join you, and get your ticket for the fabulous 2026 An Saol Foundation Adventfest TODAY. It will be an incredible evening – we will be joined by some of our Friends Around the World AND the 40 voices strong St. John’s Gospel Choir – singing in the season of Hope and New Beginnings.

Read on.

All of these events and activities are the perfect demonstration of the difference a community can make when people put their mind to it.

This is the power of us – of you!

Keep it up! Together we are creating an alternative. Improving happiness through friendship. Doubling our joy and dividing our grief.

Last Week

Here are some videos from last week. With the help of a specially adapted pencil and some support under his hand, Pádraig was perfectly able to write his name. He walked around 12 metres every day he attended An Saol, without any mechanical support. He did more than a dozen squats each day he used the Andago.

Pâdraig writing with the help of a pencil supporting his hand and fingers, He is doing this himself, with just a little external support for his arm and hand.
Pádraig walking in An Saol with the help of practitioners. He does this each of the four mornings he attends the Centre. He, and the practitioners, are getting better at it every day.
The Hocoma Andago is a device we hadn’t used often enough in the past. It took some time and a repeat visit by a German specialist for us to recognise that there are very many different ways the device can support our clients movements, not “just” walking. Here, Pádraig is doing squats.

Writing, walking, doing squats, strengthening his thighs, buttocks and hips, and improving his balance – it seems as if Pádraig gave the door that had just opened a little a big strong kick.

A Message from Tommy

Greetings – Yes! It’s that time of year again. Despite being around enough to know better, I’m lining up for another Dublin Marathon this Sunday. Apparently, 42.2km is still my idea of a good way to spend a (possibly very wet) Sunday morning!

This year, I’m raising funds for An Saol (again), a wonderful Irish charity that supports people living with severe acquired brain injuries.

As many of you know, my son Sean sustained a severe brain injury which changed his life, and our family’s life, forever. It’s given me a very personal understanding of the enormous challenges faced by people with these injuries and their families.

An Saol does fantastic work providing ongoing rehabilitation and support, based on a simple but important belief: people with severe brain injuries deserve the opportunity to continue developing, improving and living the best possible lives.

I’m also involved with An Saol as a board member, so I’ve seen firsthand the commitment of its team and the difference their work makes.

If you’d like to sponsor my efforts, here’s the link – donate here.

I know many of you have generously supported my marathon fundraising over the years, and I really appreciate it. Hopefully, your generosity will continue to outlast my knees !

Every donation, large or small, is greatly appreciated and will support a cause very close to my heart. Feel free to share with friends and colleagues.

Many thanks again for your support- donate here.

Tommy

P.S. My ambition this year is to finish in under four hours (unless it is wet!)

Celebrate with the An Saol Foundation an
Evening of Hope and New Beginnings!

Join 500 Friends Around the World!

(And make sure you become a Friend yourself. Invite ten of your friends to join you!)

Click here to get your free Adventfest ticket today

But please only book a ticket if you are sure you will be able to attend.

Marathons

26 Sunday Oct 2014

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imagesA bit more than year ago I made a deal with Pádraig that he would try really hard to get better and I would try really hard to run the 2013 Dublin Marathon. We both kept the deal and our promises. He tried really hard and I did too.

Then in May of this year, we made a similar deal. This time it was the Hamburg Marathon.

Tomorrow, it will be the third deal for us, and, as with the previous deals, I am sure he will keep his end of the bargain as will I. We will both try very hard.

I told him that I’m ready to do this running lark for as long as it takes – but that I wouldn’t be disappointed too much if tomorrow was the last run of our deal, just in case it turned out that he was going to take a few really big steps towards getting better.

As it happens, tomorrow, it will be 16 months to the day that this 4.3 ton van hit him on what we now know has been a well-know deadly strip of a country road for cyclists and pedestrians – so narrow that a cyclist and a truck do not fit beside each other in one lane, so deadly that they are now investing US$6m to make it safer.

I told Pádraig that I will be running in the company of giants: friends without whom he’d never had got as far as he did, without whom I’d long have been drowned by these relentless tsunamis hitting us for now 16 months.

Someone once told us that this was no sprint, that it was a marathon. They never mentioned that it was not just one, but a whole marathon series.

We’ll keep going. Making deals. Trying really hard. Moving.

Eventually we’ll get there (it’s not about the time it takes, it’s about finishing) – knowing that if we stumble on the way, there will be someone there to help us up. And that makes all the difference!

Thank you to all who wished us well for tomorrow! Good luck to all who’ll be running!