‘I managed to hop, walk and crawl to the end’: Fundraiser finishes 50th marathon in 50 days in Dublin

Having completed his 50th marathon in 50 days in Dublin on Sunday as part of a fundraising effort for the Irish Cancer Society Dymtro Moyseyev said he was really pleased to have taken on the challenge but acknowledged, “I’m very happy I don’t have to do another one in the morning”.

The 28-year-old who grew up in Wicklow and lives in Dublin was accompanied over the last few km of a mix of family, friends and strangers who had followed his exploits over the past few weeks on social media.

“For so many people to come out was very meaningful to me, I didn’t expect such a big crowd. I was very grateful to everyone,” said Mr Moyseyev, who had initially been anxious that the pre-arranged finish line in Grafton Street might not actually get him over the required distance in the last run of the series.

“Happily, I actually completed the marathon by the time I passed the Wellington monument [in the Phoenix Park] so the last few km were just a kind of celebration,” he said on Sunday evening.

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The young lawyer, who only started running a couple of years ago and initially didn’t like it, was working until recently with Arthur Cox but took a career break to take on the challenge.

Over the course of the seven weeks he had suffered knee, hip, Achilles and assorted other injuries.

“I think you could name any part of the body and I had an injury associated with it,” he said on Sunday evening. “I ran the length of Ireland in October, though, and had to run through a lot of pain to finish that, so I knew how bad it be. But also knew I could keep going.”

The most serious problem this time, the Achilles one, arose, he recalls, on Day 19, when he was forced to do around 60 laps of Herbert Park because of restrictions at the Phoenix Park prompted by the visit of the Chinese prime minister. “There was a slant on the path and because I did it all in the one direction, it started to cause me problems,” he says. With around 6km to go, his Achilles was causing him severe pain but “I managed to hop, walk and crawl to the end”.

“I didn’t tell people about it because I was concerned it would have been an easy ‘out’ for me the next day,” he says.

Aside from the running, and the injuries, there was the eating to contend with. Moyseyev had to consume between 6,000 and 7,000 calories a day to keep his body on the road with peanut butter, Nutella and doughnuts all featuring in his diet rather more than they normally would.

In the end, he raised more than €5,000 for the Irish Cancer Society which he wanted to support because of friends who had cancer and had overcome it in recent years.

A matter of hours after he had completed the whole thing, he was mulling over a new challenge. “There could be something later in the year although it would involve a lot of logistics and require some funding, there could be a world record involved.”

First, though, he intends to have a quick rest.

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