A morning trip to Tullamore to parkrun

Well what a day we had! Today we walked, cycled, car pooled and used public transport to converge in Heuston Station for the 7.35 service to Galway, calling at ..... Tullamore. Now I challenge you to say that out loud without using the Irish rail announcer's voice! 

The seed was planted with a discussion one night in class, which is where most of our ideas come from. Could we get the train to parkrun in Tullamore? Very simple but it meant a very early start on Saturday morning. 

First of all thank you to everyone who came along, it is not a community event without our community showing up and I'm sure many of you had second thoughts at 6.30am leaving the house but once we met in Heuston or on the train those thoughts vanished. 

Its a 15 - 20 minute walk from the train to the Royal Canal where the parkrun takes place. We arrived in plenty of time, in fact we made it there before the run Director and volunteers showed up. 

This parkrun is a looped and out and back but don't let that turn you off if they are not your favourites, the field is very small in fact we significanlty brought the numbers up by just 9 of us showing up. 

What struck me most about this parkrun is the fact that the first turn around point is right at the Ashling Murphy Memorial, the place where a young woman, going out for a run on a Friday in January 2022 sadly was murdered. There are often events that shake the running community, and events that shake the local community and then there are events that just bring both together. The line that was said for Ashling Murphy was 'she was going for a run' and that sent shivers through me and many others. A seemingly routine event in her life. (Mary also wrote all about the impact of Ashling's death at the time in The Irish Times.  if you want to go back to that article.) 

You can only imagine that if Ashling was alive today she would still be out running. That perhaps the Grand Canal parkrun would have been her local parkrun and perhaps we would have met her there. Maybe she would have been one of the super friendly volunteers on the course or the smiling runners we passed along the way. But instead we ran past a photo of her, a memorial to a tragic event. 

We don't have to go for a run, we dont have to get up at the craic of dawn to get a train to tullamore, we dont have to support one another in our runs, We Get To! This is often a sentiment we say at events, its a mantra we use for our running life, our motivation isnt always strong to run but when we get to run we never say we wish we hadn't! 

We definitely dont have to travel too far especially in Dublin to find a parkrun but we certainly enjoyed the journey together. We headed back to the train coffee in hand and a few pastries and landed in Dublin at midday.  Home in plenty of time for lunch and to enjoy the beautiful sunshine. Did I mention the sunshine?

Thanks for having us Grand Canal parkrun in Tullamore and thanks for coming along. Next stop Belfast! Our next adventure was hatched before we even started the run this morning. Belfast Date TBC. 

Aoife x

www.parkrun.ie 

https://www.parkrun.ie/thegrandcanalway/ 

Ashling Murphy Memorial - https://www.facebook.com/p/Ashling-Murphy-Memorial-Fund-100088692537891/