How running helped heal the grief for Kathryn McDevitt

The medals mightn’t necessarily mean more to Kathryn McDevitt these days, but they certainly feel different.

A year ago, on October 7, 2022, her world stopped on its axis.

It was a normal Friday afternoon that would become anything but. The Letterkenny woman was sitting in Mr Chippie with her family - a regular Friday ritual - and the air outside was punctured by the sound of sirens.

News of a horrific explosion at a filling station complex in Creeslough reached the McDevitts. Kathryn’s sister, Martina Martin, was a popular shop assistant at the Applegreen complex.  She was one of ten people to lose their lives in a tragedy that broke hearts across the world.

One year on, Creeslough to remember the 10

At 3:17pm on October 7 last year, an explosion ripped through the Applegreen complex, claiming the lives of 10 people, including three children

Just over two months earlier, the family gathered to toast Kathryn’s winning of a two gold medal with the Irish W40 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams at the World Masters  in Finland.

“When we got a call to say it wasn’t good, we drove straight down; we were there before the cordon went up,” Kathryn says now. “We were there waiting and hoping all night. The rescue dogs were in and out. We were just walking on glass the whole time.

“We just kept hoping. It was like an eerie silence. No-one looked at anyone else. it was as if we were just there.”

At around 6am the following morning, Martina Martin’s remains were removed from the scene; one of the last to be recovered.

McDevitt says: “I remember when Manus Kelly died, I saw images of his wife and I used to wonder how she was doing. That’s me now.”

A week of funerals - ten of them - followed. Donegal stood still and rallied among the families visited by an unimaginable tragedy.

McDevitt’s running season was at a close by then, but she was soon back to Ards with the group of juvenile athletes she coaches at Letterkenny AC.

“Athletics was - and is - my therapy,” she says. “Track was where I went. It’s where I’m comfortable and familiar with. I never come away from the track and think ‘I wish that I hadn’t done that’.

“If it wasn’t for athletics, I don’t know where I would be. I was that exhausted when I went back, I couldn’t get up a hill. When I did get back, I had to build back and it was tough, hard work.

“Sometimes, I wasn’t at my best, but my focus changed and it wasn’t about running. It was about keeping going and I was lucky to be surrounded by good people.”

Earlier this year, in the Polish city of Toruń, McDevitt ran alongside Snezana Bechitina, Sinead O’Regan and Bernadette Spillane to win bronze in the 4x200m relay at the World Masters Indoor Championships.

Last week, she returned from Pescara, Italy, with a silver medal from the W40 4x100m relay at the European Masters and was named as the female masters athlete of the year by the Donegal Athletics Board. She was within touching distance of an individual medal, going fourth in the 400m final, when running 61.21 seconds.

“I wanted an individual medal or at least come close,” says McDevitt, who ran six times in four days. “I’m so proud of that fourth place and to have been knocking on the door.

“When I ran in the National League for Tir Chonaill AC, I ran a load of races so that I would be ready to race. I knew then that my body could take it.

“I was strong and I was in good shape. Toruń was like a blur earlier in the year. That was my first time away from home and away from my support since Creeslough. I didn’t do much sociably after it, but the track was where I found great peace and healing. People didn’t sympathise or anything like that, but you just felt so much goodness. The athletics community was amazing for me.”