Why Virginia's runners can be thankful for a blood test

Damian McCarney

Running has played a massive part in turning around Robert Beamish’s life. Now Robert’s helping others fall in love running in Virginia with the Deerpark Forest Parkrun.

Last Saturday saw the picturesque forest host its 13th weekly run with numbers of participants averaging at about 117. Curiously enough the Virginia event owes its genesis to a blood test a decade ago. Robert hadn’t been looking after himself and was overweight. Self employed he was working long hours, his diet was poor and his exercising regime was non-existent. His wife noticed that he was drinking a lot of water, so aged 34, Robert visited his GP to get checked over.
“The results were crazy high,” recalls Robert, his Dublin accent immediately discernible from his quickfire delivery. “The blood sugars were way off. The doctor thought they had got them mixed up in the hospital and given me an older person’s results.”
There was no mix up, Robert had type 2 diabetes.
“The normal blood sugar should be between 4-7, and after fasting they should be around 5. I got my blood sugars done when I was fasting and they were like 17,” he says with a laugh.
But it was no laughing matter at the time. The diagnosis left him feeling “shell shocked”.
Diabetes specialists on the Xpert programme advised him on the best way to manage his illness and warned him of the risks. His doctor advised him to eat healthily, but particularly encouraged him to embrace exercise, such as walking. Robert heeded the advice and soon after decided to set off for “a bit of a jog” of maybe half a kilometre which left him “absolutely knackered”.
“I actually think I came home and went to bed for an hour after the first run,” he recalls, adding that despite the fatigue, he felt great. “So I just kept at it. And I built myself up and built the distance up and I started doing 5k runs, then 10k runs, and I ended up doing the Dublin Marathon in 2012.”
His weight when he got that blood test in 2009 was 18st 8lb. When he undertook the marathon he was a svelte 12st 4lb, and he happily reports to have kept the weight off.
In the course of Robert finding a grá for running he also discovered a passion for Parkrun. About three years ago, while living in Ratoath, he began meeting up once a month with his sister to do the run in Malahide Castle, Dublin and then go for a cuppa and a catch-up.
“I loved the ethos of the Parkrun,” he recalls. “It was always run by good, like-minded individuals who liked running and volunteered. I always thought there was a good atmosphere in Malahide.”
“I liked the concept that it was a free run and was inclusive.”
The global reach of the Parkrun phenomenon coupled with the barcode which enables participants to keep a check on their times also appealed to him.
“You have your unique barcode for Parkrun and you can run anywhere in the world with it – and get your time, which is great,” he says.
In July 2018 Robert and his expanding family moved back to Knocktemple, where they had previously lived from 2006-2013. On a stroll with his wife and four kids in Deerpark Forest Park he had an epiphany: “I said ‘This place is made for Parkrun’ - I can’t imagine why there hadn’t been a Parkrun there before.”
He made an enquiry with Matt Shields ‘Country Manager’ for Ireland’s Parkrun events about hosting the weekly run in the Virginia beautyspot. Whereas most Parkruns involve two, or even three laps of a park, in Virginia it has a 5km loop run within the forest.
There was a little bit paperwork but once he got buy-in from Coillte, who are in charge of the forest, and Virginia Rugby Club whose carpark they hoped to use, the event became feasible. Attracting volunteers to steward the weekly runs posed of a stumbling block with people signing up only to drop off.
“It took me about a year to get it going – it was a slow burner. At one stage I was saying to myself is this ever going to get going or not?”
 

Public meeting

A public meeting in the Riverfront Hotel, which Matt attended, finally resolved the stewarding issue, as volunteers committed to the first 10 weeks. That meeting also saw Helen Rahill volunteer to take charge of their Facebook page, and got the word out that their inaugural run was set for September 7, 2019.
“We got a huge amount of interest, very naturally from her help,” he says.
Inaugural runs attract interest amongst the wider Parkrun family, so visitors helped to boost the large number of local participants.
“People take it upon themselves to visit every Parkrun in Ireland,” explains Robert. “At our first run we had 260 people. We had people from Tralee, Belfast, Armagh, Dublin – they came from all over the place.”
That interest from beyond the Virginia hinterland has seen people from abroad take part – Robert lists France, Germany, UK off the top of his head.
“Every week we are getting people who are travelling, which is great for Virginia because a lot of them are staying over the night before in the town, and then they do the run on the Saturday, and then head back home.”
The one drawback of Robert’s role as director of the Deerpark Forest Parkrun is that he hasn’t got to participate in it himself. This Parkrun’s still in its infancy but Robert’s hopeful that once it’s firmly established that he’ll get to lace up his runners and take part.
“I would love to do the run and let someone else take up the reins for a day – I would love to do that, absolutely.”
However in the meantime he’s getting a kick out of seeing others embracing the Parkrun ethos.
“I look at the Facebook and see people write: ‘It was my first run today, I really enjoyed it and brought the kids down – that’s what I love: seeing people get what I got out of Parkrun when I started, it’s fantastic.”
 

Deerpark Forest Parkrun, Virginia meet at 9.30am every Saturday just inside the entrance to Virginia Rugby Club. They will host a New Year’s Day Parkrun.