Man of the year?

IT was one of those wintry days in the west, when the north Atlantic snaps the air in two, and underneath its one, big black woolly jumper, Galway is a mass of congregating goose pimples and shivering teeth. Mind you, Richard Donovan doesn’t find it that chilly.

He could move the tips of his toes, after all, his body wasn't shaking with hypothermia, there was no bout of snow blindness. While most people scrunched their face and moaned about the nip in the day, Richard Donovan cast his mind back to the start of the year and endeavouring to run at 50 below freezing point.

Donovan started the year by becoming the first man to run marathons at both Poles. To any normal human being, that would be achievement enough. Donovan was only warming up, so to speak. In an effort to honour his dead mother's memory and get himself in shape he decided to run seven ultra marathons on all seven continents. Last Saturday's leisurely 35-mile sprint in Galway completed the challenge.