IT IS 8am, an hour before the start. A Martian visitor on Merrion Street might deduce that he was observing an impoverished post- Nama populace on a war footing, what with the masses of pale, tense citizenry, clothed in black bin bags and skimpy knicks, causing pedestrian pile-ups in the sudden impulse to catch and hold pitifully skinny legs, before engaging in group hugs and wailing "good luck", writes KATHY SHERIDAN
If our Martian was still around several hours later to count them back in, he would deduce that our lot had certainly come off the worst.
The best of them are stumbling, disorientated, barely able to speak. Others lie prone on the roadside or fall gently into the arms of the St John’s Ambulance volunteers, before being lowered, leg muscles screaming, into wheelchairs or – on the odd occasion – manoeuvred on to stretchers. There is copious hawking and spitting and (should you be enjoying breakfast, read no further) a lot of throwing up, as well as some shocking cases of (male) nipple-chafing, manifest in visible trails of blood.
And that, dear reader, is before we even get to the blackened, bleeding toe-nails.
“The big toe-nails end up completely loose,” says Lucy Brennan (50), a Sligo horticulturist whose marathon-winning habit fails to oblige in Dublin.
Meanwhile, Irish Olympian and chef Pauline Curley from Tullamore has been nudged out of the first Irishwoman home place by her fierce rival, Annette Kealy.
Curley is doing a good job of being generous as she describes the high expectation of Kealy and how her heart was telling her to run when her body was advising against it.
“It’s only 12 weeks since I ran a marathon. I knew Annette hadn’t a marathon in her, but it’s Annette’s year. Maybe it’s time for me to take on the bridesmaid’s role for a change,” she says, gamely battling tears.
Yes, people, even the mere act of observing marathon runners is not for wimps. When a photographer hovers with intent, a group of women flinch and – to paraphrase their pithy response – say their agonised bodies stumbling across the finish line is not how they want to be remembered.
So when news breaks that some Lancashire runner is waiting for his girlfriend to reach the finish line to propose to her, we think, oh God, he can’t be serious? With people hawking and spitting all round them? And she perhaps a tad green herself after hours of running?
Supposing she takes a sharpish turn against him and says no? But when she finally arrives, five hours into the race, looking preternaturally perky but for a set of heavily swollen fingers, and William Fry gets down on one knee and pops the question, the response is a wholehearted yes, with lots of kissing.
Rachel Masterson will have good reason to remember Dublin 2009. Plus, with a name like that, she surely has some Irish roots, which she promises to investigate.
"Doing this one for Denis," says John Curran's T-shirt as he races by. The Irish Timescatches up with him only because he obliges by semi-collapsing on the ground a few yards after the finish, from where he courteously explains that Denis was Denis Spierin, his father-in-law who ran a butcher's shop on Dorset Street until he died last January.
“I loved him to bits,” says John, an Englishman, obviously moved by the fact that his marathon for Denis took him within 100 yards of the old shop.
Scratch the veneer and much of the emotion and tears at the finish line come down to stories like this, but few can be as poignant as Joan Kelly’s.
When her husband, long- distance runner and Galway publican David Kelly (39), died in a crash just over three weeks ago, one of his friends said during the funeral that David had signed up for the marathon and a consensus evolved that they “should get his number round the course”.
So yesterday, Joan, their children, Ruth, Alice Apple and Gene, and a host of friends ran it in relays for David. Would he be proud? “He would have thought we were ridiculous,” smiles Joan, “because he would think we’d only be clogging it up for other runners.” It’s the friends and family who are keeping them going, she says in a remarkable show of composure.
The Codyre family are also out in force, supporting Martin (34), who was involved in a catastrophic accident a year ago which left him paralysed and needing 24-hour care.
With the help of his brother Brian and friend Conor Galvin, he has made it, albeit feeling “pretty wrecked”. “The last part was so hard, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I can feel parts of my body I haven’t felt in 14 months. But it’s an incredible feeling,” he says breathlessly, his mother Joan standing proudly beside him.
“Do a marathon and fight this thing,” he advises others in his condition. “Fight paralysis. Science will get there. It mightn’t happen for me, but it’ll happen for someone.”
Meanwhile, the stragglers are coming through, triumphant, laughing, sprinting, whooping, lolloping through hand in hand before collapsing. One walks on his hands, another carries a pint.
A couple of young women wave sparklers while, nearby, another touches the finish line and sobs helplessly. A woman jogs through in a Macmillan Support Cancer T-shirt, her own challenge manifest in the tiny regrowth on her head.
It’s that kind of day, one for extraordinary people.