A near-blind Irish woman is on course to make history once again, by breaking her third world record.
Inspirational Sinead Kane first entered the record books over a year ago when she became the first visually-impaired athlete to complete the grueling World Marathon Challenge.
The punishing race saw the 35-year-old Cork solicitor push her body to the absolute limit as she successfully ran seven marathons in seven days on seven continents.
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First blind person to complete 7 Marathons on 7 Continents in 7 Days. #blindrunner777 #worldmarathonchallenge pic.twitter.com/HeMVTvqNWD
— Team BlindRunner777 (@blindrunner777) January 29, 2017
In recent weeks Kane, who only has five percent vision, recorded her second world record when she covered a jaw-dropping 130.5 kilometers – roughly 81 miles -- on a treadmill in just 12 hours, the greatest distance run on the fitness apparatus by a female athlete in that timeframe.
And now she has set her sights on an even more difficult challenge as she aims to break the record for the longest distance covered on a treadmill in 24 hours.
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Sinéad Kane in action.
The current record was set by Hungarian woman Edit Berces in Budapest in March 2004, who completed 247.2 kilometers in that period of time, more than any other female or male athlete to date.
However, the determined Youghal native, who only took up running six years ago when she took part in a 2012 mini-marathon, said she feels confident she can claim a hat-trick of world records in the coming weeks.
"There's another upcoming record that I intend to do. It's a record that's 14 years long and nobody has been able to break it," she said.
"I'm hoping to do that quite soon. It's going to be quite tough, and this time around I hope a lot of people get behind me."
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Sinead Kane.
Kane, who three years ago became the first visually-impaired Irish person to run an ultra-marathon in Ireland, also said both fellow competitors and the Irish public have started to realize she is a top-class athlete in her own right, following her string of remarkable feats.
In an interview on TV3's The Six O'Clock Show, she explained, "I'm trying to challenge the perceptions that people with disabilities can't do things. When I first got into running a lot of people looked at me as the poor, blind girl running around. That was how they viewed me, but now they view me as a competitor.
"I always want to push the boundaries and I'm always trying to be better and to stretch myself to the limit."
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