History of the Clare Crusaders Running Group

One of the Crusaders ran the Dublin Marathon back in 2004, based on combination of a dare and a component of his mid life crisis! All went well and a little money was raised for Temple Steet Children's hospital. Temple Street was the chosen charity because of a family connection with one of the doctors and the wonderful work that they do for sick children.

Later than year his youngest son was born and 3 months later was diagnosed with special needs. The journey began.

It became evident on the numerous trips to Dublin that there were quite a lot of children from Clare attending the hospital in Dublin. A long frustrating 10 hour return car journey for all. When the family eventually got settled back in the home routine it quickly became obvious that the support system in Clare was hugely under resourced from a specialist point of view. Basically the demand for therapy far exceeded the supply.

The Clare Crusaders were formed. The objective was to help fill this void with financial input. Yet again the father of this little boy took on the Forest Gump mentality while his wife organized specialists for their son.

Thirty of their friends followed suit and started training for the marathon. They met 5 mornings a week. With the backing of alocal newspaper they wore the same t-shirt giving the message. Doing the Dublin City Marathon 4 Clare Kids with CerebralPalsy. The last mile every morning was against the stream of early morning traffic leaving the town to work.

For the first month the horns of cars honked in their bewildered amusement. But into the second month as the group started to lose collective huge amounts of weight, the voyeurs honked in sincere encouragement. The community seemed to realize the huge personal sacrifice that the group were making.

On 1st November 2005 thirty men and women stood on the daunting starting line in the pouring rain on Dublin's Nassau St. Ready to launch into the unknown forty two kilometers of a virgin marathon. Many of their bleary eyed partners stood on the sideline, cheering them on glad that the final day had eventually arrived. From that day forth they might be able to sleep past 6am. They all wore the Clare Crusaders shirts. Displaying the message that they were doing this for Clare kids. Some even showed their allegiance to the cause and travelled from New York!

Many physical mental and personal barriers were shattered on this day. But the overall objective of the team was successfully achieved. They had created awareness about the plight of Clare kids with disabilities and had raised €100,000 in the process.