Niall Carroll from Blackrock, Co Louth, has been organising a 100k challenge since 2014, encouraging friends to get out and run a few kilometres a day over the course of a month.

Although the challenge for the last couple of years has been a community-based event, this year Niall wanted it to go bigger and bring in a fund-raising element. Breast Cancer Ireland (BCI) was chosen as the charity as Niall’s wife, Cara, was diagnosed with breast cancer last December and is currently undergoing treatment.

“We want to raise awareness that anyone can get breast cancer. Cara is a fit, active 40-year-old mother of two toddlers and a popular local school teacher. Cara is really relatable. Everyone knows someone like her in their village or town. Her involvement with this is important for BCI as she is representative of the group of women that BCI want to educate, women between 40-50 – women just like Cara who never thought that they would get breast cancer.”

So what’s it all about? “This is the perfect challenge for right now. People are cocooning and want to get out. You walk, run or crawl 3km every day for the month of June. This is a social distancing-friendly event. We have opened it up to walkers too. For those that have never done a 10km or a Great Pink Run, this is really achievable. ”

Sounds easy doesn’t it? But Niall cautions that if you miss a day here or there, the kilometres start to add up. And this is where a bit of friendly competition comes in. Get your friends and work colleagues involved to encourage you.

“We want to see this go viral and the way we see that happening is through a little bit of group rivalry. We want people to challenge their friends and call them out to participate. We have a load of Gaelic clubs ready to go. There is already massive rivalries between Gaelic clubs, so let’s see which one can actually do more. The athletics clubs could do this challenge in a week in their sleep, but there is no need to stop at the 100km, the record for this is 471km in 30 days – who is going to beat that?”

The challenge is taking place between 1-30 June. You can sign up online for €25 and you will get a t-shirt in the post. When you sign up, you get your own dashboard to track your progress.

“We are thrilled to have Republic of Ireland soccer manager Stephen Kenny as our ambassador and he is going to do it himself. We are also really grateful to our sponsors, Davys and Fyffes and TodayFM too who are helping to promote it.”

How to sign up

Getting involved is easy in the 100km challenge.

  • Register at www.100kin30days.ie
  • Run or walk and track it on an app (mapmyrun, Strava) or smartwatch.
  • Upload to your dashboard.
  • Post a photo if you want to see your dashboard numbers grow.
  • About Breast Cancer Ireland

    Breast Cancer Ireland provide education and awareness programmes nationally. Educating women of all ages on the importance of good breast health is vital as early detection is critical to ensuring a positive outcome. Funds raised from this year’s 100km over 30-day challenge will be split between research programmes that explore newer and more effective therapies for treating breast cancer patients and supporting education and outreach programmes.

    Team Irish Country Living will be taking part and you can follow our progress across our social channels. Join us in supporting this great cause.

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