Man, 30, with early-onset dementia to run marathon in every county in 32 days
Jordan Adams, 30, will run 42km per county, or over 1,300km, starting next week to raise money and awareness of Early-Onset Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).
Mr Adam’s mother died with FTD at the age of 52 and he and his brother have been found to carry the same gene, meaning they will both develop dementia in their lifetime.
The English athlete has raised almost €500,000 for charity in the UK, and is taking on the challenge in memory of his mother’s Irish roots from Leitrim and Longford, and his Irish family members who died from dementia.
As if 32 marathons back-to-back weren’t difficult enough, Mr Adams will run the London Marathon this Sunday with a 25kg fridge on his back before flying to Northern Ireland to start the Irish challenge the next day.
Mr Adams, from Redditch outside Birmingham, is now a fulltime social media content creator and appeared on RTÉ’s Tommy Tiernan Show with his brother last February.
Speaking to Extra.ie yesterday [April 21, 2026], he said that he’s proud of his Irish roots and he is hoping to see people in each county come out to show their support.
"My brother and I ran the length of the UK, which is 28 back-to-back ultra marathons, and three shorter ones to get to the end, and this is quite similar in terms of averaging a marathon a day.
"But the first one in London with a 25kg fridge will be major," he said. "I’ve been a fundraiser now for eight years, and I’m aware that to keep going and to keep getting people to engage with what you’re trying to do, you need new ways to captivate people’s imagination.
"The idea that I could carry something that was going to get people asking a lot of questions, and linked heavily to our mission to make dementia visible, was key," Mr Adams added, citing fridge-carrying ultra runner Tony Phoenix-Morrison as an inspiration.
FTD affects people between the ages of 40 and 65 and has a 50% chance of being passed down from parent to child. In Mr Adams’ case, four of his Irish grandmother’s five siblings died with FTD while eight of his 13 cousins have it, and he will likely begin to show symptoms by his mid-to-late 40s.
He aims to raise £1million (€1.15million) before the disease takes his independence and ultimately his life.
Half of the money from the Irish marathons will go to the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, and the other half to the non-profit run with his brother Cian, the FTD Brothers Foundation.
The route will see Mr Adams starting and finishing each marathon in every county town in the North before heading down along the west coast, the south, and then Leinster, before ending his challenge in Dublin on May 28.
The runner’s online fundraiser on GoFundMe has already gathered €57,000 of his €115,000 goal, and close friends and family will be traveling through the country with him with donation buckets and card readers.
"We have planned a loop in each county around the biggest towns where, hopefully, we can get a lot of people out for support, donations, but also running with us as well," Mr Adams said.
He recalled his adolescence when he saw his mother, Geraldine, go from a "really bubbly, really outgoing character" to more socially withdrawn and struggling with her memory.
After two wrong diagnoses, Geraldine was diagnosed with FTD in 2010 at the age of 47.
"I remember that day very clearly. My dad pulled myself, my brother who was nine, and my older sister who was 17, aside and explained that our mom was terminally ill and that there was no treatment and no cure, and that she had an estimated six to ten years to live."
The then-teenager played a large role in his mother’s increasingly complex care until her death six years later.
"What makes our kind of circumstance, and our story, all the more cruel and rare is the fact that we learned while caring for mom that we run the risk of having the inherited gene that causes FTD," Mr Adams told Extra.ie.
"My older sister received the diagnosis that she’s in the clear, so she’s not a carrier. At the age of 23 my genetic consultant delivered me the news that I am a carrier and I can expect to get symptoms in my mid to late 40s.
"There’s no treatment. There’s no cure. Just six months later, my little brother Cian received the same diagnosis, so overnight the FTD brothers were born.
"Since then, we’ve tried to dedicate a large amount of our young lives to trying to make a difference despite the cruel cards we’ve been dealt. It’s our mission to try and create a legacy through keeping our mum’s memory alive.
"And also all of those Irish relatives, particularly on this challenge as we head to Ireland," he added.
* This article was originally published on Extra.ie.
