Ironman Enda to carry load for charity

A Waterford school teacher is set to walk from Belfast to Waterford with a five stone washing machine strapped to his back.

Enda O’Doherty is to make the trip, in distance the equivalent of nine marathons, during June to raise money for the Pieta House suicide charity.

“The wife has to take the blame, I was having a coffee with her and she mentioned that as I had just done a few ironman events she was wondering what I was going to do next,” he said.

“I said to her that I intended to do a charity walk and immediately she told me that was far too easy, so I was like, ‘Okay I’ll do it with a washing machine strapped to my back’.

“The idea of the washing machine is that it carries a heavy load, and so do people who commit suicide, but at the end of the day the machine empties itself of the burden it is carrying and soldiers on.

“If more people could do that then perhaps we’d have less suicides.”

Mr O’Doherty said the De La Salle school in Waterford, where he teaches, lost two students to suicide in recent years.

“It was what I experienced around those times that made me decide to do this,” he said.

Mr O’Doherty though, despite the washing machine, is not whiter than white in his adventure and has already made light of the situation.

“There’s a concrete block in the base of washing machines to keep it on the floor, I’ve taken that out to lighten my load.

“Apparently it’s not the maddest thing people have heard of. There was some English guy wrote a book about his adventures hitching around Ireland while carrying a fridge, but sure that’s nothing, he could put the fridge down for a rest when he was waiting for a lift, I’m stuck with the washing machine all the time.”

And friends have not been slow to voice their opinion on Enda’s efforts.

“When I told one of my best mates he just looked at me and said, ‘It’s a mad idea, but why don’t you carry something on your back that you at least know how to use’.”