Anne and Teresa call it a day after years of mini-marathon fundraising - Kilkenny Live

Anne Keating and Teresa Dawson have nearly 40 women’s mini-marathon medals between them since they started taking part in the event in the late Nineties.

Over the many years since, they’ve fundraised for various charities through mini-marathon sponsorship, as well as encouraged many local people to take part in the event alongside them.

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Throughout the years, Anne was the organiser on the day, booking the bus and sorting the logistics.

“We’d all go up on the bus and you’d have to be up early,” she said.

“It used to be a very, very long day. So you’d be up at maybe half seven in the morning in order to be ready for nine o’clock for the bus.

“The bus would pick us all up in Callan and then we’d have another pick-up in Kilkenny before heading on to Dublin.

“Once we arrived in Dublin we’d have our lunches that we brought up with us and get ourselves ready to start the mini-marathon.”

For Anne and Teresa, the annual trek up to do the mini-marathon wasn’t solely about where you finished or your finishing time or anything competitive like that.

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The whole purpose was the sense of achievement and satisfaction from finishing it each year, getting people together, and joining as a collective to raise money for good causes.

“You’d go into the pub afterwards of course and have a few scoops, as you do,” Anne laughs.

“But we’d get the bus home then and have dinner out and that’s what we used to do for the most part over all of those years.”

For Teresa, fundraising for Crumlin Children’s Hospital was made so much more significant because she had a son receiving care in the hospital when he was quite young.

The pandemic caused immense disruption to the mini-marathon in recent years but that didn’t stop Anne and Teresa from taking part virtually and raising funds when charities needed it most.

As a result, this year’s mini-marathon was even more special because not only was it the first post-pandemic mini-marathon, but it was also the 40th anniversary of the event itself.

Sadly, it was also the last mini-marathon for both Anne and Teresa.

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Their commitment to the mini-marathon over the years was acknowledged by the official event organising committee and they were then presented with special certificates of achievement.