“Well done on all the hard work” my wife says as I leave the house to head off to the Dublin Marathon on Friday.
“No, well done for all the work around the house you’re going to do next week!” she shoots “now that all the running will be over!”
Gulp!
Very funny she is. Sometimes.
After changing the oil in my van and WhatsApping club business (while under the van) and packing all known items of running gear (all neatly washed for me, I might add!,) off I drive past Tubrid Cross and stop to fill up with the diesel in Dillane’s in Abbeydorney. The owner is outside sweeping away the October leaves. A fair athlete himself and he quips “I think ye are mad taking on the 26 miles 385 yards” but adds “but I envy ye all”. I tell him that the nine of us from St Brendan’s AC will do our best and that I will act as sweeper at the back. Hoping to be back south of the Liffey before the gantry is taken down and the Sunday evening silence envelops the city.
As I head towards Lixnaw, I recall the uneasy road of 2022 to Dublin.
It could all have finished for me a few weeks ago.
It was the second week in October and no long runs had been done. I watched in awe as our colleagues in St Brendan’s rattled off the 25Ks and the 30Ks, and over, in single runs. All way ahead of my humble efforts. So I had to up my game. A run of 30K was planned for Ardfert Recreational Centre, a place we’ve grown to love over the year. The perimeter of the magnificent Astro pitch and the pristine grass pitch is around 650 metres. About 60 laps of it would put my marathon train back on the tracks and it would be full steam ahead.
Great place to train. Smooth concrete, no noise pollution, no traffic coming at you, level as a runway, clean as a whistle. “Fair play to you!” says John Kelly, a club founder member who loves walking in the ARC as I have lift off with water nearby on my van (another advantage of the ARC) and my Garmen is purring and the sun is shining and life is good. Earphones pumping “Wild Montana Skies” by John Denver on the Ronan Collins Show on RTE Radio 1 at 12 noon.
Give him a fire in his heart, give him a light in his eyes
Give him the wild wind for a brother and the wild Montana skies
No phone to bother the head and the total freedom of the run. Lengths of the pitches to use for fartleky dashes or closed-mouth-and-breathe-through-the-nose inserts or little Irish dancing steps to add variety for the legs.
I like to absorb the hinterland as I run. Ardfert Cathedral roof could be seen to the north west and the green and manicured undulations of Ardfert Pitch and Putt course were over the fence on the north side of the ARC. A cropped cornfield next door tells the story of a good summer and a rich harvest. The children in Ardfert National School had audibly been let out to play. Their energy flew across the houses to my ears. “Mankind made the school, but God made the schoolyard” said Walter Bagehot, he English social scientist. The energy that would drive the country ahead and secure the future of Ireland and the world. The undeniable energy of the school yard.
Then suddenly a flock of swallows landed on the top of the nets behind the goals in the GAA grass field. Twittering and excited and no doubt the last of the swallows to head off to the sunny climes of Spain and Africa. Their summer done in Ireland. A few took off and came back as if testing the flightpath. Then suddenly they all took off, except one lone swallow who resisted the urge to follow. The rest headed over Station Road
I used to give my Leaving Cert Irish students a homework scéal to do when I was teaching in Tarbert Comprehensive. “Bhí an lá ag dul ar aghaidh go hiontach go dti gur…” The day was flying until… and they were to create a plot and a title. Well, soon the title for me became “The day the music died” as I lost interest in the run after a mere fifteen laps, my legs seized up and the battery went in my radio. And in my heart.
Pointless, I decided. Making a fool of myself going to Dublin. As Mohammed Ali said once about an opponent, “I’m so bad I make medicine sick!”
I restarted, as I had never failed to finish a training session during the year. I tried to think like a coach and encourage myself to keep going as I have done with athletes over many years. I rehydrated and ate a few more grapes and tried to camouflage the pain and mental plonk with thoughts of how lucky I was to have good health and to be still alive at 69 years of age. After all, a brother and a sister didn’t live to be the age I am now. I though of others I could run for also. It worked for a while and I plodded on but then, full stop again! Back into the van and home and goodbye to the marathon. Too slow to keep up with my eight club colleagues who are in a different league. Mentally kicking myself in the backside and worse, admitting that I wouldn’t be physically able to do another marathon ever.
And I didn’t want to emulate the marathon-end of the first man to run a marathon. Poor old Pheidippides dropped dead after bringing news of the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC! His last words were “Joy to you!” Fair play to him.
But the sun set and the sun rose and two days later I was back in action on the soft sand in Barrow. Plan? To give up on the long runs and do shorter, more intensive ones. Fartlek, soft sand, hills, twin runs some days, fast walks…not checking the Garmin too often. Survival mode. The culture of the effort is fundamental. Take the chance and you will never regret it. Arthur Lydiard, whose book Run To The Top Con Dennehy lent me recently, proposed that one should do a module of speedwork the week of the marathon.
That and more got me on the road to Dublin yesterday.
Autumn leaves dancing in Adare and russet trees getting russeter and streams of traffic coming against me on their way to a long weekend or mid-term break in Kerry. The Silvermines resplendent in the setting sun and then bacon and spuds in the Obama Plaza in Moneygall – great place – and soon autumnal Dublin wraps its arms around the mind. I love Dublin and always have done from All Irelands as a child with my father and later as a resident for eight years and from the early marathon days in the 1980s where I ran 3:12 in my second one. But I had trained for that, and oh yeah, I was a younger man!
I hear the news that Ballydonoghue’s Jason Foley has got his well-earned All Star as the best full back in the country. A great honour for my other parish and Jason is a fine example to all, both young and old. His grandfather was a founder member of the Ballydonoghe Parish Magazine which is entering its 37 year. I have to edit some items in the current upcoming issue before I sleep tonight! Jason will feature much in it.
Then the alarm rings this Saturday morning – I am already awake - and it’s out to the RDS to register. A wettish morning and would be ideal if it was like that on Sunday. Pre-hydrated air. Parked in a nice place near the RDS but the parking meter wasn’t working so had to circle. The usual buzz in the RDS and very efficient in the registration hall and friendly as well. Loads of stalls selling their stuff and of course I couldn’t resist. On duty at his post is Frank Greally, the Irish Runner inspiration whose book, Running Full Circle I finished last night. He exudes passion for athletics. And life. Then to Blackrock where I spent years of weekends at my craft outlet and headed for a lunch of pancakes and syrup – lots of syrup - with extra crispy bacon in The Yellow Fig. Tried to keep my feet on the heels as an hour passed in perfect relaxation.
As I drank a few cups of sweet tea, I sought positivity in the year gone by. A few miles covered in non-marathon-style training. Munster masters indoor walk, national indoor walk (in the beautiful Athlone Arena), British Masters walk in Lee Valley in north east London, a lovely arena also. Then outdoors in Kerry, Munster and Derby for the British masters outdoor walks championships. And then the Athletics Ireland national masters championships. Ah yes, the national championships in a hot hot hot Tullamore in August where three St Brendan’s AC walkers made their national walks debut along with Con Dennehy of An Ríocht AC. With Michael O’Connor (Farranfore Maine Valley AC) and Pat Murphy (Castleisland Walking Club) Kerry masters kept walking to the forefront that beautiful day.
A regular summer chat with John Griffin, Dublin Marathon winner supreme, was always inspiring when I often bumped into him near my favourite Lesotho bookshop in Tralee.
So back through heavy Saturday evening traffic and here I am at 10pm on the Saturday night before the big event. “Not young and not renewable, but human” to misquote the poet Thomas Kinsella who was born a few doors away from the house where I will sleep for a few hours tonight. Then up in the Dublin Sunday morning and across the city to the leafy streets around the Grand Canal to Fitzwilliam Square. The first and second and third waves with the well-prepared pistoleros will be well on their way when we start in the fourth wave. The Purple Wave. The last wave.
Then at 9.45am we will join the river of runners going north over the Liffey and through the Phoenix Park and back to the southside and…who knows.
By the time I might reach the last Purple Mile and the finish in Merrion Square North, the other waves will have reached home, hotel or wherever and will have well started the after-marathon-heaven-is-here level. So will my St Brendan’s AC colleagues. Let the celebrations then begin.
The marathon is a noble thing and deserves respect. It is a strategic ennabler if you treat it right. The runners will meet a part of ourselves that lies beneath and is rarely visited. We will question our very core. If the training didn’t go to plan, we will question ourselves even more in the excursion into something different. It ain’t no way to treat a marathon if we don’t prepare properly and we have to pay the price. That is the terrible beauty of the great run. The journey may be the destination for many with the experience of emotional and physical diversity.
We finish and some of us say never again. Then we start training in May. We know the soul-rinsing experience that is there for the taking.
Sure anyway, comfort is the enemy of progress. Let’s make the magic and believe for a while that the myth is the only reality.
The line from Gladiator comes to mind at this moment. It has to be paraphrased.
“We, who are about to suffer, salute you.”
