LOOKING BACK, Sharlene Mawdsley is convinced her father’s spirit guided her back to the track in the weeks after his passing. 

She has just settled into her off-season break on the day that we speak, but in June, she wasn’t thinking about athletics. She had withdrawn from racing. She was, understandably, prioritising family over sport with no real headspace available to contemplate the rest of her season in athletics. 

And then a call came. Her Ireland teammate Sophie Becker was unavailable to compete at the European Team Championships in Slovenia due to injury. Mawdsley had previously forfeited her lane in the women’s 400m. But now there was a way back for her. Something intervened to reopen the door. Or someone.

After a chat about the offer, her mother, Louise, nudged her to lace up the spikes.

“You’re going,” she told her daughter. “You have to do it.”

And then Mawdsley ran a season’s best time of 50.93 to finish third in the women’s 400m and put Ireland in the hunt for promotion to the first division. She carried on, and won the 400m at the Morton Games as well as the 200m gold at the National Athletics Championships.

And then the World Championships in Tokyo came into view, something which Mawdsley had already qualified for. A force was coming from somewhere to lead her back to the Irish singlet.

Irish athlete Sharlene Mawdsley.

“I don’t know how,” says Mawdsley, reflecting on that season’s best performance at the European Team Championships. “I think it was just adrenaline. 

“That was maybe my Dad’s sign to make sure that I am going to continue with the season.

“It was always going to be really hard to race in Ireland. The reason I was racing there in the first place was because both of my parents were going to get to go and my family. So that was probably the hardest one for me to do this year.”

The days are rarely the same when living through a bereavement. It’s the same for Mawdsley and her family. Some days are ok. Others are bad. Running turned out to be a distraction for her while trying to cope with all the emotions that were coming up to greet her each day.

But when someone who has become a famous athlete is trying to grieve privately, another challenge presents itself. The news was quickly being circulated after the sudden death of her father Thomas. In response, she posted a message on her Instagram account, requesting privacy while also paying tribute to her Dad. It wasn’t something she wanted to do at such a difficult time, but she felt she needed to act to protect her family.

“I did find that hard because it was out in the media before I could even tell some of my friends. And that was really hard for my family as well. You just want privacy in that time. It’s not something that you want to share with people, and especially so soon.

“So, I did find that really difficult. But it was more, I wanted to protect my family from that. I guess, at the end of the day, you put yourself out there and people do want to follow your life. Generally, it was really positive. I had so much support. 

“I was really blessed in that way that people were so supportive.”

Transitioning from last season to this season was challenging for Mawdsley. She came down with a bout of the post Olympics Blues after a brilliant debut in Paris which almost yielded a medal for her in the women’s 4x400m relay. It’s a common ailment for athletes.

How does one return to normal living after experiencing something like an Olympics? The enormity of it can be overwhelming. 

Sophie Becker, Phil Healy, Rhasidat Adeleke and Sharlene Mawdsley after finishing fourth in the final of the women’s 4x400m relay Olympic final. Morgan Treacy / INPHO


Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

And for Mawdsley, the Paris Olympics came on the back of a brilliant 2024 season where she won a bronze medal at the World Relay Championships, followed by a European Championships which ended in gold [4x400m mixed relay] and silver [4x400m women’s relay] success.

“That’s nearly everything that I had ever dreamed of, to win medals and to also go to the Olympics,” Mawdsley says.

“So, I found it like quite difficult when I came back to navigate what I wanted to do.”

Mawdsley missed out on the Tokyo Olympics but she was firmly involved in Ireland’s track output at the World Championships, featuring in the individual 400m event as well as the mixed and women’s relay teams.

The relay outfits fell short of a place in the final but she did manage to reach the semi-finals of the 400m. That was the target she set for herself and she celebrated accordingly. RTÉ even captured the moment she knew her qualification was assured. 

“I did believe that I was in semi-final shape. I honestly knew I wasn’t going to be in final shape. The 400 metres has just taken [off to] a whole new level right now.

“It was more of a relief than anything.”

Mawdsley finished fourth in her heat in 51.04 and clocked 51.22 to take eighth in her semi-final to give her a 20th place finish overall. The numbers are a reflection of where she was at giving what she has been through. But there’s more in the tank.

“We knew earlier in the year that I was in really good shape. So we just kind of keep going back to that point of, ‘If I hadn’t had an interrupted season that we know I would have ran really fast.’

“We’re going into next season knowing that if I just do the work that I’ve done last year, it is going to pay off eventually. And hopefully there’s no disturbances in that period of time.

“It wasn’t that I underperformed. It was just genuinely where I was at. It’s not that we were happy, but we also weren’t disappointed.” 

Earlier this year, Mawdsley ran the 400m and 200m at the Grand Slam Track athletics series in Philadelphia. Four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson launched the series as a direct challenge to the Diamond League but it abruptly ended due to financial difficulties.

Ireland’s Andrew Coscoran also competed in Philadelphia and featured again when the series was in Miami. He won over $50,000 in prize money, and says he’s confident that he will receive those earnings. Mawdsley enjoyed the experience but is less encouraged about the $15,000 she is due for coming sixth in the long sprints category.

“I don’t have any animosity towards Michael Johnson. He didn’t go into this thinking that it was going to go bankrupt. He tried to do better for the sport. Obviously, it would be nicer to have that money in my back pocket. But I’m glad that I got to experience it nonetheless. And I know it’s not a personal thing. I am one of many athletes who haven’t been paid.

It’s break time now for Mawdsley. She has five or six weeks of rest to look forward to before the work resumes at the end of October. Switching off is something that comes easily to her. There’ll be no itch to pound out a few kilometres or hop on the bike for a spin class.

Michael Breen and Sharlene Mawdsley after Tipperary’s win over Cork in the All-Ireland SHC final. Morgan Treacy / INPHO


Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO

Not even another race around Thurles could tempt her. The Olympian was videoed running on the street in the hours after her native Tipperary won the All-Ireland hurling title. Her boyfriend, and now three-time All-Ireland winner, Michael Breen tried to discourage her but she had been challenged. She had to set some people straight.

 ”I guess someone saying I bet I’m faster than you. One thing led to another.

“When you’re drinking, you think you’re invincible. I was wearing sandals and I remember Mikey being like, ‘You’re not doing it.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I am.’”

Her dog Lola is her primary form of exercise for now. Being a parent isn’t easy and the daily walks can’t be ignored. 

“I’m more so doing that for her than for me,” she says.

It’s been a difficult year for Mawdsley. But something is telling her to keep going.

Irish Athlete Sharlene Mawdsley and Zambrero Ireland are inviting runners across the country to join the first-ever Plate4Plate Zam Run, taking place nationwide this weekend from 25 September to 28 September.

Each kilometre tracked will equal a meal donated to Rise Against Hunger.

WHAT IS IRELAND’S oldest sport, its ancient pastime which harnesses the spirit of those who live here and leans into the nature of the island?

Hurling is what we usually tell ourselves. Some 3,000 years and counting people have been putting stick-to-ball.

Yet hurling is still only in the minor ranks compared to some of the more primal pursuits. For as long as there have been humans on this land, and wherever they were before they pointed the boats north-westwards, they ran. 

When Ireland’s first inhabitants wanted to get anywhere they’d have to forge a trail. Once the path was there then you could get to places quicker if you broke into a jog, pumped the legs up the hills and careered down slopes letting gravity and dexterity carry you along. 

Trail running could make a case for being our oldest athletic pursuit, or even the first form of rapid public transport.            

Tomorrow morning at 7am Irish time, 8am local, when many of us are setting out on the commute, Luke Weldon will be standing on the start line of the Short Trail at the World Mountain and Trail Championships in Canfranc, in the Spanish Pyrenees. 

He’ll have been up at 5am to eat a small bowl of cereal. After that he’ll have sat on the bed, relaxed, eaten a banana and got a carb drink mix down. A 30g gel will be ingested a half hour before the race. He’ll have to keep those levels topped up as he goes along, the rate being 100g an hour. 

All of that is second nature to him by now. Part of a routine that helps him to be set at the start tape, ready for this ‘short’ trail: 44 kilometres through the mountains with 3,600 metres worth of elevation to keep the views varied and spectacular.

Go.  

*****

Earlier this week and Weldon, a 20-year-old from Glencormac, Co Wicklow, is sitting across from The 42 at a cafe on the Bray seafront. 

He has spent the early morning running the Little Sugarloaf trail. Nothing too hectic, just keeping the legs turning as Friday nears.    

Weldon comes home third in a UTMB race in August.

The main thing for him is to be fresh. Left to his own instincts, Weldon admits he’d likely overtrain. An obsessive streak he’s always had with sport would kick in, but he’s learning now that there is a different, smarter way.   

“If I go in overtrained at all the race is not going to go well because it’s so long,” he says, “so I’ve come into both the trials and this race not underprepared but really fresh.” 

Fresh is the word his coach Julia Davis uses all the time. Weldon has been guided by the Cornwall-based woman since last October. He credits her with helping him get his best results yet and qualify for the World Championships. 

The pair have never met in person. Everything has been done through video calls, whatsapp messages and an app which tracks his pace, heartrate and cadence amid a mine of other data. 

He puts in around 90-100km a week, with about 3,500-4,000m elevation. 

The older lads he trains with would do a bit more, about 130-140km. “Maybe next year the training might ramp up a bit more but if I make that massive jump too soon then I’m going to not last long.” 

Weldon likes to delve into the data, but has come to realise that, like putting in miles, you can get to the point where enough becomes too much. 

“I use it as another tool, not the main tool,” he says. “A few years ago I got too fixated on the data. I’d wake up in the morning and I’d see that my recovery score is 30% and maybe if I didn’t have it I’d be like, ‘Oh that’s grand’ but because I see that I’m thinking, ‘Ah this is going to be a really hard day in training or it’s not going to go well from the start’.” 

Nowadays he says it mainly comes down to “how do I feel”? Davis asks him this all of the time.  

“She’s not here in the country so she can’t see what I look like; if I’m turning up at a session a bit unmotivated, or a bit tired looking.” 

This puts an onus on him to be frank and transparent with himself as much as the coach. 

“Her approach is she wants you to really enjoy the sport. Then she wants you to always feel fresh, always feel good while running.” 

*****

It might seem natural that an athletic young fella from the foot of the Wicklow mountains would grow up running the trails. But we know that’s generally not how it goes in this country. Sport tends to take place inside the white lines. 

Weldon counts himself a big rugby fan and he played at out-half in school in Temple Carrig in Greystones up to the age of 15. This wound down due to “a few too many concussions” which happened playing rugby and Gaelic football earlier with local club Clann na Gael. He reckons he had four, two in rugby and two playing GAA.  

“I still love watching rugby,” he says. 

He played golf then and in fourth year in school got into rock climbing. This became something of a fixation, he says. Hour after satisfying hour spent on an indoor wall. He managed to get himself on the Irish development team and hoped to one day make it to the Olympics. When Covid hit he built himself an outdoor, 40-degree, climbing wall.

“But then I basically overtrained and I got injured,” he says, holding out his hands with two knuckles that are swollen, the result of synovial joint distress. 

“Climbing injuries are weird,” he says. “You’re putting so much stress through your fingers, it’s inevitable that if you get something like that and if you don’t get that proper recovery, physio and everything after that then it’s not going to be the best.”   

This, he says, is why he has to rein himself in now. Passion must not cross to excessive wear and tear and then injury.

“I don’t want to fall into the same trap as what happened with climbing . . . because that is kind of what my psyche is. I like to just train loads. And if I didn’t have this coach I would probably 100% be overtrained going into this World Championships.” 

Weldon found trail-running while injured, doing a bit of road running to keep fit. Then a neighbour involved in the IMRA (Irish Mountain Racing Association) scene said there was a race on Little Sugarloaf, why not come along? This was four years ago, “quite recent”. He looks back on pictures from then and sees “such a novice”. He didn’t quite know what he was doing, but he knew he liked it. 

The climbs – well, he’d get to become proficient at those and even come to enjoy them. But at the time he wanted them out of the way. Just get me to the descents.    

“Yeah, it’s something about running downhill, not thinking about anything because if you think about you’re going to fall you will just fall,” he says.

When you’re running downhill “you’re just kind of letting go and being just . . .” he tails off to consider the feeling of speed and momentum and being locked into the moment, all conscious thoughts silenced. It’s a bit like being on a mountain bike, he says. Your mind is empty and focussed solely on picking your line.  

“You can’t teach someone to run downhill,” he says. “Basically you don’t do anything to run downhill – let gravity just take you and the more you let that happen the faster you go.”   

Luke Weldon in front of Bray Head this week.

This trust in the elemental forces and an ability to commit fully to the act helped him make fast progress in the sport. He could pass other, more experienced, competitors running downhill. Though he makes the point that the stakes were sometimes lower for him. 

“Obviously I was young, 16, you know, I didn’t have much of a brain on me and I was racing adults who were maybe 40 with a job and they didn’t want to break their ankle. I was like, ‘I don’t really care, I’m just going to go for it’.” 

*****

Weldon is in Canfranc as the youngest member of the Irish senior team. 

He did shorter races at first, around 6k, and found it alright, but never felt it was something in which he could excel. Lads from the track would turn up for those runs and their ability to keep the heartrate high for a short enough distance meant they’d burn him on the climbs. 

“I’d always fall way too far behind,” he says, “I was never be able to get them on the downhill so I thought ‘This is ok, but is there anything else?’” 

That chance came at the Youth World Skyrunning championships in 2023 in Italy. First there was a “vertical Kilometre” race, 3.8 km long with a 1,033m ascent. That was more of the same: good, challenging, but not entirely satisfying.        

But then came the 23k race with 2,226m of climbing. As the race went on and the minutes turned to hours Weldon had a thought. “I like this now . . . This is what I really like. Being out there for a bit longer, being able to have a few ascents and descents in a single race.”  

Weldon’s physiology suits the longer slog. He has a resting heart rate of 38-40. And during lengthy runs it keeps a fairly steady rate.   

“On climbs it’s up around 165-170 and 120-130 on descents. But then throughout I never really have too much of really sharp dips; you look at a whole long race and it would stay pretty constant.”  

On the mental side he has “no idea” where he gets it from, being able to stay out there for races which can be five-to-six hours long. Certain people perhaps just have that something that’s innate where they want to get out and settle into a rhythm and keep going long past the point where it would be sensible to stop. During Covid times Weldon did a charity challenge for Pieta House where he did 100,000 steps in a day. 

Another day he set off into the mountains and ran 60k, “just for fun to see how far I could go”.   

He adds: “I was way too young, I should never have done that and if I had a coach I never would have.”

It’s in longer races that Weldon has made strides. He crossed the line first with training partner Enda Cloake in the World Championships trial race at Granite Peaks at the end of May, a 53k race with 3,435 metres climbed. 

“So that gave me a lot of confidence that I can do distance,” he says, adding this was his longest race to date. 

He earned a third-place finish in August in a UTMB (Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc) race of 24km. 

“To get on the podium of a UTMB race was pretty big for me. It’s a well known racing series and attracts high level athletes.”  

He adds: “That came off the back of a racing stint I had in Europe. I went to another World Cup race with an even higher standard of racing and I came 30th. On paper it doesn’t seem amazing but there were around 300 in that race and it was won by the previous world champion so the calibre of athletes in those races are really high. I raced seven minutes faster than last year. 

“Going into that UTMB race I didn’t actually feel amazing, didn’t feel too fresh, just went in saying, ‘I’ll race it’ and that’s been my last race.”  

*****

Weldon has travelled to Spain as part of the team of 33 Irish competitors in the World Championships, with support from Athletics Ireland. 

He’s able to run races around Ireland, Britain and Europe due to sponsorship deals done by agents Ryan Sosna Bowd and Lewis Renton of Portfolio Sports. 

Grants from Sport Ireland are not yet available to trail runners because it is not an Olympic sport, though there is a push on to get it included for Brisbane 2032.   

“Sometimes it’s hard watching guys get contracts and here I am training like a pro, but hopefully I’m going to get there,” he says. 

A couple of days a week working at a leisure centre locally earns him money, and he also helps his dad Tim, a landscaper, sometimes. He’s been going out to work with his father from a young age and reckons the physical nature of the work has helped with endurance. 

Weldon would like to make a full-time living out of the sport ultimately, but that’s not why he runs the hills. 

“I just do the sport because I just fecking love doing it,” he says laughing. “If Athletics Ireland didn’t support us at the moment and if I’d qualified for the World Championships, I’d still go to the World Championships and find a way there.”  

*****

Weldon counts himself lucky to be on the doorstep of some spectacular trails: Sugarloaf, Kilruddery, Belmont, Crone Woods, and Glendalough is a 30 minute drive away.    

He’s also blessed, he says, to be part of a training group which includes athletes such Dublin City half marathon winner Killian Mooney, Matthew McConnell and Enda Cloake.   

“They’re maybe six years older than me, they’ve all been on the senior Irish team before, lads I’ve kind of looked up to,” he says. “I started training with them last winter. I feel that being in that group has brought me on so much this year.”

Finding an elite group of mountain specific athletes to train with in Ireland is not so simple. Yet he stresses that this is a sport for the masses. If it’s your 100th race, you’ll go up and say hello to the person doing their first. 

And afterwards: “No matter what your time is, you could win it, but you’ll still stick around for the guy coming 80th in the race.”

And you don’t have to be from near the country’s more mountainous terrains to get into the sport, you can be from anywhere with a bit of access to the outdoors. The feeling you’ll get from the air, the views and the living environment around you is both free and valuable beyond measure.  

“I think it’s a thrill you can’t get in any other sport,” he says. “You’re not out running around roads, running around cars or a singular track. You’re running a route that next week will be different. It could be rainy, wet, warm, it’s always changing. 

“Your mind wanders but it doesn’t really think. Sometimes if you’re on the road it can get a bit boring . . . I don’t know, for me it does. In the hills I’ve never had a boring run. 

“There’s something about being in nature. It’s just nice and pretty peaceful.”  

You can follow the exploits of Luke Weldon and the Ireland team at the World Championships from 25-28 September live here on YouTube.