Wheelchair athlete Jerry Forde passes the 250 Marathon mark...

A few weeks back, I had a story on the blog about how Jerry Forde from Blarney was about to do 10 Marathons in 10 days in Sixmilebridge, Co.Clare. Just getting there for the start of the first one was a story in itself as outlined by Mick Dooley in this post.

After that, a number of people asked about how did Jerry get on? Needless to say, he completed all 10 Marathon as can be seen in the results HERE.

Recently I caught up with Jerry for a quick chat about where he was at in terms of the number of Marathons completed. Those ones in Co.Clare actually took him past the 250 mark and at the start of August 2013, he had 256 Marathons completed.

These can be broken down as follows........
Marathons (26.2 miles) : 244
Ultra-Marathons (26.2 miles +) : 12
30 Miles x 1
36 Miles x 1
39.3 Miles x 7
100 kms x 2
100 Miles x 1

That is of course a huge number of Marathons and it has taken quite a while to rack up that many.

Jerry first started taking part in the local road races back in 1992 and his first race was the Cork BHAA race in Pfizers in April of that year. Later on in October, Jerry completed his first Marathon in Dublin.

Back in the 90's, there were relatively few Marathons and #24 came at the end of that decade. In more recent times, there have been many more opportunities to take part in Marathons and Jerry's list has grown as a result. In April of 2006, he completed his 100th Marathon with his 200th coming in October of 2011. He is now well on his way to #300 possibly some time in 2014/15?

Looking around various sites on the Internet, there is obviously no shortage of people around the world who have completed 100+ Marathons but the same cannot be said of wheelchair athletes. If they are out there then they seem to be relatively unknown as there is very little information available.

It's fair to say what Jerry Forde is doing is pretty unique. He has almost certainly completed more Marathons as a wheelchair athlete than anyone in Ireland or the UK. Quite possibly, he may well be No.1 in Europe if not the world.

With that in mind, I think it's only right that Jerry's achievement should be made public and be available to view from anywhere in the world. I have recently put together a website for Jerry so that  is now possible. The address is.... http://jerryforde.wordpress.com/

(Photos courtesy of Doug Minihane)