'Part of me knows if I stop running, that's the start of a decline'

Evan Scully, a 34-year-old living with cystic fibrosis, unofficially broke the European marathon record over lockdown

Evan Scully: 'I try to never take more than a week off. I'd always be doing something. Even if I don't want to run, I have to'.

Evan Scully went out for a light run on Tuesday. Nothing heavy, just two and a half miles.

It was a run he did not massively enjoy given his body continues to ache from recent exertions.

Those exertions refer to the 2.55 marathon he ran on Saturday week last. By any metric, 2.55 is a cracking posting.

Now, consider that Evan is a 34-year-old living with cystic fibrosis, someone whose doctors said was unlikely to live beyond his 10th birthday.

The European marathon record for a person with CF is 2.59.42. Scully’s time is four minutes faster but will not go down as the new European best given his run was not part of an official marathon event. Quite the opposite, actually, as he and fellow athlete Breda O’Connor circled Navan’s unbusied roads in what was very much a lockdown effort.

He walked two to three miles every day since before chalking down his first post-marathon run Tuesday gone. A 10-day gap between runs, irrespective of the distance covered, is a little longer than Scully tends to leave the shorts in the drawer.

You see, an almost unspoken rule of his is that he never goes longer than a week without putting down a run of some sort.

It was as a teenager he realised the longer the period he went without running the poorer his lung function would be, the more chesty he would feel, the more mucus would be in his system, and the more he would break into fits of coughing.

He runs because he enjoys getting out onto a road and emptying his mind as he clocks up the miles. But equally, he runs because he knows how imperative it is for his health.

“I enjoy running and I am a pain in the arse if I don't run, but there is a part of me that knows if I stop running, that's the start of a decline,” Scully explains.

“I try to never take more than a week off. I'd always be doing something. Even if I don't want to run, I have to. It is what is keeping me alive.” Going right back to the beginning of his running days, putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as possible for as long as possible had next to nothing to do with managing his CF diagnosis.

Evan ran to be competitive, to represent Ireland underage, rather than it being prescribed for him. In fact, he was told by medical personnel to cut back on his training load and focus more on the airway clearance techniques that help people with CF breathe easier.

“The way I was seeing it, the people they are telling to do that end up in hospital and I am not in hospital, I have never been in hospital, so I must be doing something right.

“When I stopped running competitively, there is nothing for you to get out there and go, 'well, I have to run'. I started lifting weights instead, but it is not as good as running because it is not an aerobic workout.

“My lung function did drop because I wasn't running. I noticed I was getting more chestier and wanting to clear my airways a bit more. I'd go on a run, then, and get up a load of mucus. And I was like, I have to run. So I started running [again] because I knew it was good for me. And then I started running competitively again because my neighbour put it in my head to do the Dublin marathon in 2017,” recalls the physical therapist and conditioning coach who has worked with a number of international athletes.

He completed the Dublin marathon - his first time attempting the 26.2-mile distance - in 3.09. For three quarters of the race, he was holding 2.44 pace but miscalculated his salt intake - he loses salt at a rate almost four times greater than someone who doesn't have CF - and cramped badly during the closing miles as a result.

In April of 2019, he clocked 3.15 in Milan, despite tearing his achilles three weeks before the race.

A third marathon during lockdown number three was not planned. Scully had been training for the National 50km Championships in Donadea, Kildare, which was meant to take place last weekend. But when that event bit the dust, it made perfect sense to put his 50km training to use.

“I'd like to claim the European record as my own, but I can't. It wasn't a chipped time. It just gives me more confidence that if I was in a race I know I can run 2.55. I am happier that Breda O’Connor, who I coach and who also wanted to break three hours, did exactly that (2.59.58).” The arrival of Covid-19 has left so many with CF in a constant state of high alert given they sit firmly in the at-risk category.

Scully has of course been cautious, but there has been no locking of the front door and shutting himself off from the outside world in a bid to ward off the virus. He continues to see patients in his sports therapy clinic in Navan, he continues to live life as much as lockdown restrictions will allow.

“I take the precautions, but I am not worried about it. Does it mean if you worry more, you'll get it less?

“The way people with CF live our lives isn't 100 miles away from the way everybody else has been living theirs this past year. When there is a bad cold or flu going around, we don't go into the cinema because there are more people in a cinema. We are hyper-aware that if we get a cold, that might lead to something worse.

“I remember turning 32 (the average life expectancy for an Irish male with CF) and thinking, I am not another statistic. But I don't wake up every morning and go, ‘I have CF' or 'I am another day further away from that statistic’. It would be like you thinking about your left arm daily. You have had your left arm all your life. You don't wake up and go, ‘Ah jaysus, I still have my left arm’.

“I am not locking myself away but I can understand why others would. If they get anything, it could lead to a few months in hospital.”