Geraldine’s personal goal
For well-known Blackrock resident Geraldine Rogers the motivation in doing the 100km in 30 days Challenge for Breast Cancer Ireland was not just to support Niall and Cara but to challenge herself.
As a diabetic for 68 years, one of the oldest in the country, Geraldine was delighted to find that undertaking the 100km over the curse of a month wasn’t as daunting as she had feared.
‘I’m not a walker but I wanted to do this as I know Niall and Cara and a lot of my friends were doing it. I decided that just because I’m a diabetic I wasn’t going to let it stop me,’ she explains.
Geraldine was the first child to be diagnosed with a diabetes in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital when she was just four years of age.
She is insulin dependent and recalls the early days when she had to get an insulin injection with ‘a glass syringe and a horrible steel needle’.
Back then, there was very little available in terms of specially produced sweets for diabetics and she remembers her father driving to Belfast to get treats for her.
‘From an early age, I learned to be disciplined about what I could or couldn’t eat,’ she says, crediting her parents for instilling that in her.
‘Of course, I did have the one sweet now and then when I was at school but I knew that I couldn’t have more than that!’
Geraldine has learned to cope with diabetes and knows how to control the bouts of high and low blood sugar which affect diabetics.
She leads a full life but says she wouldn’t be able to do so without the help of her husband and best friend Peter, and her good friends. ‘If I didn’t have their support I would be less good,’ she says. ‘If I’m on the golf course they will keep an eye out for me.
As she embarked on the 100km in 30 days challenge, she decided she would walk on her own, so not to hold anyone else back.
‘I always took some jelly babies in my pocket so I could eat them along the way to stop my blood sugar from dropping.’
She was also careful to walk in areas where there were houses so she could get help if she needed it.
As the 100km in 30 days challenge comes to an end today, raising more than a €1.1 million, Geraldine is proud to have played her part, and says she did it both for her self and for society.
‘I felt if I could do it, absolutely anyone could.’
Her proudest day was when she walked 10km on her own without having hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) .
‘It was brilliant’. Geraldine was one of a group of extended Rogers family and friends who did the walk. The group, which included Betty Rogers, a breast cancer survivor, Rita Doyle, Ann Rogers and Maria Dullaghan, donned their pink t-shirts for a photo to celebrate them all completing their 100km.