The long and winding road around Achill

As one man told Toirlach Dever on the Saturday just after he had finished his epic 24-hour run around Achill, it took a madman to think of the idea and another level of madness entirely to actually see it through.

On the Friday, as he pounded the roads of Achill, it was hard to find many people who thought he could finish it, including this writer.

The task the well-known Achill Gaelic footballer set himself was mammoth. Having never run a marathon, Dever set out to run three of them in 24 hours, hitting every corner of the parish of Achill in the process. As anyone who has ever run in Achill will tell you, there’s very few flat routes so he wasn’t exactly picking the easiest terrain either. 

He started in Currane at 3pm on Friday afternoon, March 14 with his target to finish in Dooega on the south of the island 24 hours later.

How, many of us wondered, would he succeed in running through the night with virtually no sleep? His longest training run was 42km – a marathon – but only a third of what he set himself. Surely he was doomed to failure? It’s not as if he’s an ultra distance runner either.

A strong, solid centre-half back/midfielder for Achill, Dever is football fit but that’s apples and oranges when compared to distance running. His physique is far more suited to the rough and tumble of Gaelic football than eye-watering distance running – or so many of us thought.

But as he ran up the hill towards the finish in Coláiste Acla in Dooega on Saturday afternoon, he had confounded everyone with a superhuman display, covering 126km across the vastness of the parish of Achill.

It was a fundraiser that really captured the imagination of people in Achill. The parish, which incorporates the island as well as the villages on the Corraun peninsula like Polranny, Belfarsad, Currane and Tonragee, were fully behind Dever. Across the 24 hours, people came out in daylight and darkness to cheer him on and scores of people joined him for company along the run. Everywhere he went, positivity radiated and anyone who took part recalled the wonderful atmosphere along the way.

It was, surmised Dever, an example of the great community spirit in Achill.

“We might kill each other at times, but when one of us goes to war, everyone rows in behind us,” he told the Western People.

They make them hardy on Achill. Battered by the wild Atlantic and on the periphery of Europe, life on Achill often creates a resilience among its people. That such a unique and daring effort would take place here was probably no great surprise.

We were in Currane on the Friday afternoon to see Toirlach off, our kids totally transfixed by the escapade. Tommie Joyce, a great Achill GAA man, was accompanying Dever for the first 25km.

Joyce and Dever stopped at Polranny graveyard after 10km for Toirlach to pay a poignant visit to his father’s grave. Terence Dever was tragically killed in a car accident en route to work in Belmullet as a member of An Garda Siochána in 2009 when his youngest son was still in national school.

Toirlach did his father and his mum Margaret and all the family proud with his efforts. He was fundraising for Grow Mental Health, and while he has never required their support himself, he felt it important to highlight and promote positive mental health and greater awareness of the availability of support for people who are struggling.

The Grow t-shirt he wore on the run had emblazoned on the back ‘recovery through community’, and the power of community was so apparent on this journey for Dever. The likes of Joyce, Joe O’Malley, Dylan Reilly and Stephen Kelly covered savage ground with Dever and everyone who joined him for legs of the run gave him adrenaline and motivation.

“The craic along the way was so important,” said Dever.

He went around his home village of Sáile after dark on Friday and was blown away by the reception with bonfires and people lining the roads.

“It is something that will never leave me,” he said.

He was finding the going tough at 4am going from Keel to Dooagh, the most westerly point of his run (for reference, a 40-minute drive from Currane) but the energy Jonathan Fadian and Ferdia Joyce brought was contagious and got him over the hump.

It was in Dooagh where he took his only sleep of the 24 hours, a 40-minute cat nap in the back of the support van and it was enough to send him out at dawn on Saturday morning with a pep in his step. The Dookinella Pipe Band marched him through their village not long after.

Dever singles out two ‘great supporters’, Patrick Carr and Michael David O’Malley who cheered him on along the way while he has a special word for Mary Cattigan, who was a great aid to him. Officially, Mary is an acupuncturist but that only scratches the surface of what she brings.

“Every time along the way when Mary came along to do a session for me, she just lifted everyone’s spirits. I’ve no words for her, she’s a saint,” he said.

Mary also discovered a hidden superpower in Dever. He cannot recall ever missing an Achill game through injury and reckoned it might be good luck but as she worked on him in the build-up, Mary noticed an incredible ability of his body to recover from long training runs and treatments compared to mere mortals. It would serve him well for the 24 hours.

He also singles out physiotherapists and fellow Achill men Patrick Patten and Eddie Doran for their assistance along the way too.

Toirlach was tired at the finish line – heck, everyone watching him was tired just looking at him - but he got up on Sunday morning and felt ‘grand’. Indeed, it wouldn’t have been a shock to see him travel to Tourmakeady to play in the Kelly Cup for Achill!

But he had earned a rest and a chance to enjoy the rest of the weekend. At the time of writing, he had raised in excess of €17,000. You can support it via the following link: https://www.idonate.ie/fundraiser. 

What’s next?

Well, he has the bug now. He never ran an official marathon and now has ran three in 24 hours. He would love to take part in the New York or Boston marathons but also has his eyes on the incredibly gruelling UTMB.

That’s the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, considered the most difficult trail ultramarathon in the world. Covering 174km from a Friday to a Sunday and traversing the Alps of France, Italy and Switzerland, it has strict entry requirements. Dever is certainly on the right road for it. But his more immediate focus is another fundraiser, for local girl Shannon Lynch, a niece of Mary Cattigan.

Shannon took very ill at her home in Cashel on February 15 and it was discovered she had a substantial bleed on her brain. She was rushed to Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin for emergency surgery and is due to undergo further major surgery in April.

All of Achill and beyond are rooting for Shannon on her brave battle and yearning for her to be back at home with her twin sister Muireann, little brother Brian, back in Sáile NS and back on the pitch for Achill Rovers and Achill LGFA and Irish dancing with the O’Connor School of Dancing. All donations will assist with Shannon’s road to recovery.

To support this most worthy fundraiser, go to https://www.gofundme.com and search for 'Shannon Lynch's Journey to Recovery'.