Loving Navan father runs 10 marathons in 10 days in memory of infant son

A bereaved father from Navan who ran ten marathons in ten days to coincide with the 10th birthday of his son who tragically passed away when he was just one-day old says he wanted to highlight the pain of infant loss.

Ian Lawton completed a gruelling 42.2km marathon every day running 422km in total, just short of 30km of running the entire length of Ireland around Claremont Stadium for ten days ending on his son Hank’s tenth birthday earlier this month. He said:

“I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion, like any ten-year-old boy you would have a big deal 10th birthday so that was what was in my heart.

“I reached out to Claremount Stadium and they very generously permitted me to use the track while it was closed to the public so that allowed me to have a covid safe, covid compliant event.

“I ran pretty much the length of the country on a 400m track which is insane when you break it down afterwards, I think I was 30km short of running the entire length of Ireland.”

The inspirational athlete who once weighed 25 stone and lost an incredible eleven stone in nine months said this latest challenge helped him to find peace. He added:

“I felt that the track represented that hamster wheel of monotony of going round in circles when you are dealing with bereavement and every day is like a marathon and you have to get up the next day and do it all over again.

“On one evening I almost became hypothermic, there was a wind chill of minus zero, I was less than a kilometre from my front door and I could have ended the agony at any moment but something just compelled me to continue and it was in that turmoil that tempest that I just found peace in the midst of the storm.

“Hank is definitely woven into the fabric of my very being nothing will change that whether he is present in this plain of existence or not, he’s always with me.”

Ian has decided to take the challenge one step further and continue running one marathon a month for the rest of the year to raise funds to finish a documentary he has been working on called “Survived by, “an intimate portrait of infant loss.

To help the cause search for

“RUNNING FOR HANK 10 TEN10 for Bereaved Dads Doc”