Olra spells success for dyslexic runner in half marathon
RECEIVING your official marathon bib with your name misspelled might be a cause for annoyance to most.
For Orla O’Connor, though, the mistake inspired her to raise money for the British Dyslexia Association as she tackled the Ealing Half Marathon.
Orla, or ‘Olra’ as her official running name has become, has herself struggled with dyslexia all her life.
She said: “I am incredibly dyslexic myself and I just thought it was really funny.”
Her name, as it transpires, has caused amusement in the past as well.
She said: “With a name like Orla it definitely gets corrected a lot to ‘Oral’, which was a bit embarrassing when I was a teenager.”
“I’ve never actually seen it misspelled the way they did. My boyfriend Googled it and said ‘there’s no one on the planet called Olra, I have no idea where they’ve got this’.”
Orla ran on Sunday last week with the bib as it was printed, raising over £300 for the charity.
She remembers her own struggles, saying: “My primary school wasn’t very supportive to be honest, and so when I went to secondary school I didn’t have a very good reading ability.”
By the time she reached secondary school, her reading comprehension was well behind her peers.
She said: “I was very lucky in secondary school to have an amazing teacher and she sort of diagnosed me, and made sure I got help. I’ve been fine ever since pretty much.
“I quickly brought my reading comprehension up four or five years.
“It was a really sharp progression rate as soon as I got some one-onone support. Obviously I see the world a little differently, and I think it’s a massive part for why I became a creative in the end.”
The British Dyslexia Association is the largest UK charity that supports people with dyslexia and their families, teachers and employers.
Orla said she would keep the JustGiving page live for a week, in the hope of collecting more donations.