‘A pint at the start and a pint to finish’ for the man who ran the width of Ireland in a day

Fiona Frawley

runner smiling and holding up his hands in victory on Millennium Bridge in Dublin

Fairly impressive, as the rest of us struggle to carry ourselves from one side of the room to the other in this heat.

Distance runner Rob Pope has successfully completed a literal cross-country run, from Galway to Dublin in less than 24 hours.

The Liverpool man who is also the first person to have completed the “Forrest Gump run” – during which he ran more than 24,000km across America over 422 days.

According to BBC News, Pope enjoyed a pint of Guinness in a Galway pub moments before he embarked on his run from the Spanish Arch on Saturday 6th August. He then set off on his route at 10:31pm, accompanied by a four-man support team. He followed a route of back roads and canal paths in order to avoid busy roads and motorways.

Pope undertook the run to raise funds for global conservation charity WWF and Peace Direct, a charity supporting those affected by wars all over the world.

On his Just Giving fundraiser page, he wrote:

People have asked why I want to do this and, like Forrest they’re asking if I’m running for world peace, the homeless, women’s rights, the environment or animals. Well, I’ll take any opportunity I can to tell you to PLEASE go and check out the work of the @wwf and @peacedirect and see how you can help, but this is more the classic answer:

#IJustFeltLikeRunning

He also noted on his fundraiser page that 7th Aug, the day after the scheduled run was the Edge of U2’s birthday, and that he’d “be listening to nothing but U2 with maybe some Fontaines DC at 6h intervals” while running.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg4ntVYIvzG/

While Pope was accompanied by his support team throughout, he was also offered support and encouragement by strangers who’d hard about what he was doing through social media.

The runner told BBC News:

One fella, he’d driven down about 45 minutes having heard about it and he brought us down a bunch of bananas… And my body just went ‘yes, you want one of them, have one of them’.

The staff of a small shop in Cloghan, Offaly also turned out to support him as he passed and “provide him with a fresh helping of cereal bars”.

As Pope entered Dublin city, another runner named Tony who he described as a “guardian angel” joined in to complete the rest of the run with him.

Pope said:

I had about 10 miles to go… I’m in a hole at this point and Tony comes along and asks, ‘Do you mind if I run with you’ and I was just like ‘yeah, but I really need to concentrate now’.

So, we just worked together, and it got to the point where I was following him… he would warn oncoming traffic. We came off the Royal Canal heading down into Dublin as the sun was going down.

Arriving in Dublin well before midnight, Pope was able to reward himself at the end of the run with a well deserved pint.

The plan was to get to Dublin for a pint before the end of the 24 hours, and you’ll be glad to hear we did…We had a pint [of Guinness] at the start and a pint to finish.

Header image via Instagram/run.robla.run