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Irish Independent

Tipperary man runs 100km from Limerick to Galway in mammoth fundraiser effort

Chris Britton, originally from Clonmel and of the well-known Limerick band Dylan Flynn and the Dead Poets, has already raised €1,500 for the international humanitarian organisation, with his GoFundMe page remaining open for further charitable contributions. The charitable Tipp man has been attempting to get the 100km stretch done for approximately six months, but after various health obstacles he finally completed the run just over a week ago. Britton claimed a sense of adventure is what drove him to take on the challenge. 'A lot of people keep asking me why I did the run and to be honest, I don't know,' Chris laughed. 'I just really like doing these long distance things for fun. I feel like I get to see a lot of the country, and it's always a good adventure. I always enjoyed reading stories about Tom Crean and Antarctic exploration – I guess I'm just looking for a little bit of that in my life, without the minus 60 degrees temperatures.' Chris completed the 100km run in one go, with a small bit of walking interspersed over the 15 hours it took. 'Being constantly sick over the few months leading up to the run made me feel less prepared than I wanted to be for it, I suppose,' the musician reflected. 'By the time I ended up doing it, I knew I wasn't ready, but I was too frustrated to keep waiting. I was extremely lucky to have my friends out there to give me a hand. You know… you can overcome a lot physically, but if your mind starts to go as well, if you're physically and mentally hurting, then you know you're in trouble. So just having all those people keeping my spirits up was a big help. It helps you get over the hump when the pain is starting to creep in.' Despite the impressive magnitude of this charitable act, this is actually not the first massive feat of physical endurance Chris has taken on for charity. 'I think the first big challenge I did was in the middle of the pandemic – I did this really long hike that I really wanted to do, covering all the mountain ranges I would have hiked as a child with my family,' Britton said. 'At the end of it, I just thought if I share this, I think maybe people would give money and I felt like maybe I should do something to fundraise because if I do, maybe it'll raise money for a good cause. It felt like an opportunity to kind of make something good out of it, instead of me just wandering around in the wilderness.' 'It's kind of like I'm doing something that I had wanted to do anyway but using that to do some good,' Chris continued. 'Sometimes when I talk about, you know, the 100km run, when I'm in the planning stages and I'm talking to people about it, some of them ask me what's the charity? People ask me so much that I'm like, yeah, I don't actually have one, but I probably should do a fundraiser, because people kind of expect it almost sometimes, so it just seems like a waste not to. It feels like… why not?' So, why Concern this time? The Tipp man explained he has a deeper history with the charity tracing back to his college days. ADVERTISEMENT 'Around seven years ago now, when I was living in Cratloe student village in LIT, there were people coming around door to door on behalf of Concern asking people if they wanted to sign up to donate every month,' Chris said. 'I just got chatting to one of the guys and he explained what Concern do and why it was a good idea to support them. I've been giving them €7 per month ever since. I feel like it's probably a charity where your money goes a long way, where you can help people who are victims of war and in much more terrible situations than any of us will ever experience. I don't really have a personal stake in any kind of local charity, so I thought I'd stick with Concern because I've been supporting them for a long time.' As for what's next in terms of his fundraising, Chris said there is 'always something in the pipeline'. 'I think the next one I'm going to do is a full Iron Man with my friends in Barcelona,' Britton said. 'So maybe I'll put up some fundraisers for that too. After that, maybe I'll climb the highest mountain in every county… There's always something that, you know, always the next thing. As soon as you finish one thing, you're kind of like planning the next one.'