from Athenry AC Fresh from his organisation of a hugely successful Connemara Marathon Weekend Ray O’Connor is on the brink of taking on the biggest challenge of his racing life. This might sound strange as many of us know that Ray completed the infamous 10-in-10 Brathay Challenge which involved running ten standard road marathons (on a hilly course) in ten days, but, Ray flies out today on the first leg of the trip that will lead him to the starting line of the Marathon des Sables. Wikipedia describes this race as follows “The Marathon des Sables (MDS) (Marathon of the Sands) is a six-day, 254 km (156 mile) ultramarathon, which is the equivalent to five and 1/2 regular marathons. The longest single stage is 84 km (52 miles) long. The event is held every year in the southern Moroccan desert. It is considered the toughest foot race on Earth. The first event of the Marathon started in 1986. This year the race takes place from the 27th March to the 6th of April.
Ray has trained hard over the last number of months, but like most participants in a race of this intensity, would surely like to have done more. We want to send the best wishes of all Athenry AC members out to Ray and let him know that we’ll be supporting him from afar all through this gruelling event.
It’s possible to send messages of support and encouragement to competitors during the race and I’ll post details here later of how exactly we can support Ray in that way. Ray is one of a number of Irish competitors in the race this year and we send all of those atheltes our very best wishes for a successful and safe race.