Wright's journey of self-discovery

For a short period every year, the mid-summers sun hovers above the conifers of Northern Finland for an astonishing 24 hours a day. Light, uninterrupted, for every one of the 86,400 seconds that it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis.

Last June, Finnish native/Newport mother of three Paula Wright spent each one of those seconds running, stumbling, and keeping going, as she competed in the Belfast Energia 24-hour, the ultimate event in Ireland’s endurance running calendar. The very notion of putting the body through that kind of exertion might seem like a sure-fire way of jeopardising your health, but ironically, Paula’s motivation was based on improving her physical wellbeing – at least that was how it started.

7 years ago, the 36 year-old Paula was struggling with a life-threatening health condition, seriously overweight due to a debilitating form of diabetes contracted during pregnancy. She was on a cliff edge, her confidence shot, and the prospect of not being there to watch her kids grow up a genuine concern.

“When my youngest was one, so I’m talking around 2011, I realised that I had a serious problem because I was just that heavy, so I decided I’d start walking. And walking didn’t really do anything, I started a bit of swimming, that didn’t work, I started diets and they would make the weight drop a bit but you can’t live with the diets – you have to live normally as well. So then I decided that’s it, I’ll start running, because I did like a running a bit before.”

The literal and metaphorical distance Paula has travelled over the past seven years is borderline inconceivable. After all, her beginnings in the sport were humble, in the most extreme sense.

“I couldn’t run past two lamp-posts before I was out of breath - I was so bad, I was so out of breath, I was just so out of shape. It took me well over seven or eight months before I could run from 0 to 5k, but the first 5k was actually the hardest.”

 

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