Mairead to honour her late mum with mini-marathon run

MF

TODAY FM broadcaster Mairead Farrell is set to honour her late mum Maureen by running the Flora Ladies Mini-Marathon.

The bubbly presenter will be joining thousands of women on the streets of Dublin on June 7 as she completes a 10km run to raise funds for ARC Cancer Support. She credits the organisation for helping her family through some difficult times following the passing of her mum just before her 21st birthday.

"They've a brilliant service that my family used when my mam was very ill and when she passed away, we used the centre on Eccles Street as well so they're a very good support service. There's no family in the country that hasn't been touched by cancer," she said.

And the 31-year-old is hoping she won't have too much trouble keeping up with her fellow athletes, given that she's been training hard over the past few months. She has been joining Ray D'Arcy -- who broke his nose this week running into work -- on his 5km runs around the country.

"Those runs are really enjoyable, they're grand. You're kind of getting warmed up and then it's over so it's a nice distance to do when you're starting off. I'm only running about a year. But I did a half marathon at the end of April which was over 20km so I'm feeling okay about it."

The Eurovision fan also revealed how she's keeping her fingers crossed for Jedward this weekend -- and she would have loved to fly to Baku to cheer them on.

For the past few years, herself and her colleagues on the Ray D'Arcy Show have been travelling over to the Eurovision to report back live.

But she said it wouldn't have been fair to go over to Azerbaijan without Jenny Kelly, who is due to give birth next month.

"We couldn't be all going away to it with Jenny staying at home" she said.

"I would love to go over for the final on Saturday. I thought Jedward were brilliant at the end with the cartwheels.

"When they started calling out all the countries, I thought, 'Oh no, the last place is going to Israel and their stupid song'. So thank God they went through."

This week saw Mairead, who is loved up with boyfriend Louis Ronan, lending her name to another good cause. She signed up to take part in the Wallace Brothers CROSS Rugby Legends Cycle which is raising funds for cancer research. She lined out at Trinity College with the famous rugby family, Richard, Paul and David Wallace to highlight their forthcoming 700km cycle from Mizen to Malin Head in September.