It was only while Sophie Power (41) and her family were driving to Malin Head in Co Donegal from Co Cork, did she realise how large a task she had ahead of her. Power is an ultra-runner based in England, married to an Irishman, and she had decided to try become the fastest woman to run the length of Ireland.
The most recent Guinness World Record was set in 2012 by Mimi Anderson. To beat it, Power had to run just under 170km every day, starting in the most northerly point, Malin Head, and finishing at the most southerly point, Mizen Head.
“We drove up in the camper van from Cork, all the way up to Malin Head, and the drive alone was an endurance event,” Power says.
But she ran the distance last week, covering 200km in the first 24 hours, and beating the world record by more than three hours, completing her 563km feat in three days, 12 hours and eight minutes.
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Sometimes runners get a window of a few weeks during which they can choose their run dates, but Power, a mother of three children, Donnacha (9), Cormac (6), and Saoirse (3), on British half-term from school, had no such flexibility. She planned the run so that the family could attend her husband John’s niece’s christening ceremony in Cork, where he is from.
“It was 8am on Tuesday and there was torrential rain at the start, so the weather was really difficult. I think two days of really bad rain, and then the last day I got heatstroke in the heat, the Irish summer finally arrived. Ireland threw everything it possibly could at me.”
Generally, Power says, she can run 235km in 24 hours, but because the terrain was quite hilly, she had to reduce her pace to be in good shape for the rest of the challenge.
“I’m used to running without sleep for the first 24 hours. I tried to have a nap at half three in the morning and I just lay down for 20 minutes and it wasn’t happening, my body was too awake, so I just got up and ran again,” she says.
Power admits she had no idea where she was a lot of the time, seeing Irish placenames she didn’t know on road signs. She remembers Longford because her friend had come out to support her with her family there.
Somewhere around Nenagh, Co Tipperary, however, on the second night, Power started hallucinating, which happens often during ultra races, she says. The red and green lights she saw became, in her mind, like a Christmas scene.
“I was seeing plastic [Christmas] trees everywhere, and it was a dangerous road, trucks going really fast, so we needed to get me off the road and have that 30-minute nap and I felt completely coherent again.”
“It’s quite incredible, my mind sees these beautiful patterns and trees and I see familiar faces and trees, and I quite enjoy it. I think I enjoy it much more in a trail when I can’t get taken out by a big truck,” she says.
She ran the entire distance on the road and the issue of camber, where the road is slightly curved for drainage, means that one foot is higher than the other while running. That can put a strain on the body, “which might be fine for a 10-mile run, but after 150 miles on this run, I got a knee injury, so I had to have it strapped up”.
At this point, she was chronically tired. She started taking more 10-minute power naps, but did not take longer rests because she did not want to let herself fall into a deep sleep.
Heatstroke and hallucinations: A mother’s record-breaking run from Malin to Mizen Head
There was a crew of four in a separate camper van to her family, and Kate Strong, who was cycling alongside Power, would alert the van when Power needed a nap. They would pull over, put a camping mattress on the ground, put a dry robe around her, and she would sleep for 10 minutes, before being told it was time to go again.
She did her last day’s running powered by “gels and Mr Whippys [ice cream]”, she says, because she could not eat much due to heatstroke.
When she arrived at Mizen Head, she says she cried her eyes out, “proper big, ugly tears”, running through the crowds that had gathered to welcome her.
“I had my three kids there ready to give me high-fives and cuddles and it was really emotional. But it’s just the middle of nowhere, it’s not a massive finish line, it’s not a massive celebration, it’s big hugs to my kids, have a can of Guinness because I was breaking the world record, and then get back to Cork,” she says.
Power founded SheRaces, an organisation to encourage women of all ages and abilities to run, after a photo of her racing the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc while breastfeeding her then three-month-old went viral.
She had wanted to defer her place, but says only injury-related deferrals were permitted.
“But it’s not about just pregnancy deferrals, it’s about so much more … we work with race directors to say what we can do, and it’s some really simple easy things like having the imagery on the picture website, not just all the skinny, fast men on the start line, but a wide range of people, including women of all shapes and sizes and colours and ages,” she says.
“We [women] want to know our T-shirts will fit, we want to know that we’re going to be given the best chance to finish that race with a cut-off that’s fair, that allows us to go through at our pace.”
The organisation pushes for male and female winners to both be announced at races, because they are “equally valuable”, and Power says she works closely with Cork Marathon.
Listen to Sophie Power in conversation with Bernice Harrison on the In The News podcast
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