St Luke's Bike Run marks a decade of support with 400 bikes

Over 400 motorbikes are expected to rumble through the streets of Mullingar next Friday morning as the Midlands Motorcycle Club begin their 10th St. Luke's Bike Run.The event runs over the 25th, 26th and 27th June with hundreds of bikers taking to the nation's road, travelling from Westmeath to Kerry to raise money for St. Luke's Hospital.The St. Luke's Bike Run has to date raised over €800,000 since the first run in 2000 and this year there are bikers coming from all over the country to join local bikers in their odyssey through Westmeath and across the country to Tralee.The now iconic bike run, which is its tenth year, begins its journey at Tuar Ard in Moate. The bikers, all members of the Midland Motorcycle Club, will arrive into Mullingar at 11.30am, travelling down Patrick Street and through the town centre.Their support group will be fundraising on the streets of Mullingar between 11.30 and noon.Loretto Farrell, CEO of the Midlands Motorcycle Club, which was founded with one function, the organisation of the annual St. Luke's Bike Run, is overwhelmed by this year's entries: "This is going to be the biggest and best run yet and we look forward to welcoming bikers coming from throughout Ireland and it is great to see people coming out and supporting the bikers in each and every town."Loretto Farrell was diagnosed with cancer on Christmas Eve 1998 at St. Luke's Cancer Hospital, Dublin and was operated on four days later.Lorretto also received chemotherapy and radiotherapy in St. Luke's Hospital in 1999.The following Christmas, her children bought motor bike-mad Eugene, their dad, a CD with the song "Out on the Highway (Born to be Wild)" which inspired the idea of a Bike Run to fundraise for St. Luke's. The first St. Luke's motorcycle "fun run" was organised for the last weekend in June 2000 and it has since become the largest motorcycle event in Ireland, with representation and participation from nearly every single motorbike club in the country.Over the weekend, the bikers will travel from Mullingar, through Tullamore, Portlaoise, Carlow, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Carrick on Suir and Waterford City. On day to they travel through Dungarvan, Youghal, Middleton, Kilarney and Tralee. Day three the bikes begin their journey home to Westmeath travelling through Limerick, nenagh, Birr, Tullamore, Kilbeggan and finally Athlone.For more than fifty years St. Luke's Hospital, in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar, has been caring for cancer patients from all over Ireland. Since its formal opening in May 1954 hundreds of thousands of patients and their families have experienced the special care that the hospital and its staff have provided. Some patients have been resident, more have been treated as out-patients.