THIS weekend, more than 25,000 women will pound the Dublin pavements as they take part in the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon. The annual 10-kilometre road race has been held each year since 1983 when 9,000 women took part. It is the largest women’s event of its kind in the world and over €230 million has been raised for charities across Ireland.
It will begin at 12.30pm this Sunday and has already sold out. Many women will be using it as an opportunity to raise funds for Irish charities that mean a lot to them.
Here, Emma Kilcawley Hemani speaks to two women who have a very special reason to lace up this weekend. MARGARET Macauley was diagnosed with the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis in 2020, just as the lockdown was coming into effect. She got in touch with a family-run charity, the Irish Lung Fibrosis Association for support, who had been a massive help while her father was going through the same illness years earlier.
Over the next three years her condition deteriorated rapidly, to the point where she was on oxygen 24 hours a day and in desperate need of a lung transplant. The only way she could exercise to keep fit and to keep her strength up for the operation was via Zoom with classes run by IFLA. She received a lung transplant last October and was kept in hospital for three months, noting it was “definitely a longer journey than I had anticipated”.
She was kept in the ICU for some time and didn’t get to see her three kids for six weeks before she got out just be.
