Recruitment meeting for Westmeath Relay for Life

The second Westmeath Relay for Life event is in the works as the date has been set for September 19 and 20.

The 24-hour walkathon was brought to the county by Daisy Carey, chairperson of the Relay committee, and last year’s inaugural walk raised €57,000.

“My mam had just been through cancer,” said Daisy. “Thankfully she’s on the better side of it now, and we’d always talked about how we should do Relay for Life.

“We used to be involved with it, we used to Irish dancing in the one that was in Offaly.”

Having an awareness of the event, and considering their mother’s recent recovery, Daisy decided there was no better time to look into organising a Westmeath Relay for Life.

“We ended up getting a great committee together,” she said. Daisy and colleagues on the committee didn’t expect the response to the event. “Whatever we thought we’d do, we did so much more.”

The team are looking to expand for 2026: “What we’re hoping to do this year, on March 10, is a committee recruitment meeting.

“We want to get more people involved on the committee, as it’s such a big event to organise. We had a great committee last year but there’s so much to do.”

Relay for Life is the largest fundraising initiative for cancer research around the world, and the Irish Cancer Society is one of the beneficiaries.

Multiple teams take part in the relay and they have members walking for the full 24 hours.

“It’s from 2pm to 2pm,” said Daisy, “a full 24 hours, and we’ll have loads of stuff going on. We’ll have entertainment, food and all those kinds of things.

“Right now, we’re just re-establishing this year, seeing what we want to do, where we want to go and how we want to make it better.”

The event also pays homage to those who have beaten cancer.

“They are the survivors. It’s all our family, friends, people we know, people who have been through cancer and they’ve survived it and come out the other side of it.

“Our survivors are like the VIPs for the weekend. We have catered lunch for them and then last year we had yoga classes for them and reflexology.

“And they walk the opening lap – the Survivors Lap.

“There were some beautiful photographs of our survivors walking around, we had a banner made for them and they were paraded around, and we had the Mullingar Town band playing. And there were so many as well still going through treatment.”

As well as honouring the survivors, the day also has a ceremony to pay respect to those who have passed away from cancer.

“That’s the Candle of Hope Ceremony which involves candle bags – they’re decorated candle bags, and they’re for the people we’ve lost to cancer.”

The candle ceremony takes place at night time and the bags are lit with electric tea lights. Some bags are placed alongside the track to guide the walkers on their relay.

The fundraiser takes place at the Tyrrellspass GAA grounds.

• Anyone interested in taking as a team or a committee member can make contact via relayforlifewestmeath@gmail.com.