Home run hero

“You’ve never seen anything so romantic as the N3 outside Navan at 4am in the morning,” gushes Cormac Lewis, still “buzzing” after completing a 100-mile run from Wales back home to Cavan last weekend.

The run has raised almost €4,000 (£3,200+) for UK homeless charity, Crisis, to date.

Setting off at 1pm on Friday, May 5, Cormac arrived in Cavan Town 24 hours and almost four marathons later, on Saturday, May 6.

Until then the married dad-of-two figured he could run as much as 50 miles, having previously completed Ultra London.

“I never knew you could run more than 26 miles. But the London Ultra was 55km and I found I absolutely loved it,” he explains. “You’re going a bit slower, a chatting pace, and when I finished I had this different energy. I said I’m doing more of them.”

The success led Cormac down a “rabbit-hole” of sorts - podcasts, books, articles etc. One book stood chief among them, written by Rosie Pope, a 58 year old who successfully completed a five-year, around-the-world adventure run following the loss of her husband to cancer.

“It got me thinking that one day I’d run home myself, all the way to Cavan,” recalls Cormac, who commutes to work in London City and runs the 10 miles to and from his workplace for training.

Putting miles in his legs means getting up at 5am and running the streets of London at a twilight time when few others are awake. Despite working in the city for the best part of two decades, it was only then that the harrowing situation facing thousands living on the streets became truly apparent to Cormac.

“I’ve worked in London 20 years and you do see people begging, but at 5am you see people living, surviving, in December at minus two degrees, families in doorways on Oxford Street. You’re back on those streets again maybe later that day for a meeting and they’re gone.”

It weighed on Cormac’s mind so much that his wife Gemma suggested marrying both causes.

The former champion kick-boxer had intended running alone, but just days before setting off from Porthcawl, his friend Matt Stroud called saying he’d run the first leg (27 miles) to Cardiff Airport with him.

Last minute, Cormac also decided he’d bring his kids - son Oshy (6) and daughter Cosy (8) – who’d make the journey from Cardiff to Dublin airport via a short hop Ryanair flight, and be there in Cavan to celebrate when their dad finally crossed the finish line.

Cormac and Matt ran 27 miles along mostly coastal path in “horrific” Welsh weather, arriving at Cardiff Airport at 5.30pm last Friday.

A quick change and wash down in a pub outside the airport, check through security, and Cormac met up with his cousin Tom McCormick on the other side of the Irish Sea just before 10pm.

Tom had initially offered to drive 15 miles ahead and let his van be used as a refuelling stop. But despite his initial reluctance, Tom was persuaded by Cormac to run the first 10 miles to Ashbourne.

“To the right there are aeroplanes taking off, to the left there are trucks. We got onto the N2 about 11pm and ran a half marathon to Ashbourne. By then I was passing my limits. I’d never run beyond 35 miles. It was so good to have someone there.”

After 15 minutes of refuelling, Cormac set off again, this time on his own - 18 miles to Navan.

Despite meticulous spreadsheets of miles per stop and how much food he’d require to make up for the 10,000 calories his body was burning through, the one thing Cormac couldn’t account for was the wealth of determination his friends put into supporting him along the way.

Approaching Navan, Cormac began to feel the pain of what he was putting his body through.

“I was in a bit of a pain cave, a ‘what the f**k am I doing’ cave? But, just as I was coming into Navan, [friend] Mickey Brennan appeared. He’d dragged his kids out of bed, dressed as pink flamingos, and holding a banner saying ‘Go Cormac Go’. It just gave another lift I needed.”

Tom was there too, and so was Damien Donohoe, another of Cormac’s life-long friends, who came on the promise he’d “walk five miles”.

“I just was so full of energy, I said to him ‘c’mon, we’re running this!’ It was pitch dark, outside Navan, the sun was rising, the mist was there and the birds were beginning to sing. You’ve never seen anything so romantic as the N3 outside Navan at 4am in the morning. Suddenly 10km had passed and Damien was still going.”

Cormac recalls: “If you’re not a runner and you’ve just done 10km at 4am in the morning, it’s going to be painful. In a strange way, it was really helpful to have someone there suffering like I was, suffering and shuffling down the N3. It should’ve been the worst part, and I was planning for it, no sleep, 60 something miles in, I thought that was the part I’d start breaking down, but no, it was awesome.”

By Kells, now 6am, Tom “joined again”, subbing in for an exhausted Damien who’d run his furtherst distance to date (Mile 58-68).

Another 5km for Tom turned into ten, which then saw him completing a combined marathon distance by the milestone ‘Welcome to Cavan’ sign at Whitegate on the outskirts of Virginia.

“He deserves a medal,” says Cormac of his cousin. “People give up on their own, but we kept each other going.”

Until now, Cormac has neglected to mention the fact he’s nursing a broken toe, incurred in a stubbing incident while putting his kids to bed five weeks previous. He laughs at the ridiculousness of the situation.

“It’s knowing you’re not going to die, but you’re just going to be bloody sore the next day probably. That relationship with pain is a strange one. It can be a good thing. You need that darkness to love the light. There’s a beauty to the madness of it all.”

After running Whitegate to Virginia alone (Mile 75-81), Cormac was greeted by his sister Jennifer who ran five kilometres to Fintavin where he was welcomed into the McEntee home and served up “more fuel for the journey”, before completing the rest of the trip home to a rapturous reception alongside more friends - Jonty O’Neill and brother-in-law Karl McEntee (Mile 86-100).

In his mind’s eye Cormac had set upon next making it to Tractamotors, and finally the Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Felim overlooking the Lewis family home.

“I’d great visions of getting to Cavan and doing a lap of the town, or running into the Abbey and getting a pint, but by then I just needed to get home. I was just so zonked.”

Two days on and Cormac is “buzzing”, so much so that he nearly gets cajoled into attending a Coronation rave back in Porthcawl before he says his wife Gemma “wisely put a stop to that”.

“By the time I got home, I could barely get up the stairs.”

Recapping, Cormac is as proud of what he achieved as he is of the personal bests his friends set also.

“I’m 43 this year and I’ve hit my physical peak. But the real Eureka moment for me is having my friends coming and doing this with me, suffering with me, enduring this together. My achievement is as relevant as their’s. They’re texting me today, still sore but buzzing. Having them part of this journey makes it mean that much more. And then arriving home to see my family cheering, that was special, really special. The kids were there to run that last bit with me. It was emotional.”

Would he do it again? the Celt asks Cormac. The answer is “absolutely”. But not for the reasons most would think.

“I know I can do 100 miles now, so it has to be more. What’s the point in doing something you know you can do? So you have to do something where there’s a risk you might fail to make it worthwhile. There has to be more chance of you not doing it than doing it, because when you do succeed it feels f**kin’ amazing.”