Everyone who finished the marathon looked to be in the grip of simultaneous agony and euphoria
WHAT POSSESSES them? What mad spirit is it that gets hold of people and convinces them that they want to run 26 miles? Twenty-six miles no matter what.
Thirteen thousand people showed up in the refrigerated shade of Fitzwilliam Street early yesterday morning and could have offered 13,000 different reasons for putting themselves through this ancient race, this battle with oneself. By the end, most were too tired to remember the answers.
Few gatherings are as wilfully delusional as the mass field that forms a marathon race. All over Dublin, the city had that particular quietness peculiar to bank holidays. But the streets near the race start point were different. Along Baggot Street, couples hugged as if one of them held a one-way ticket for an ocean liner and not an entry number for a road race. Some wrapped their arms around themselves and jumped up and down. Others remained as still as Stoics. The sun shone and the leaves were golden and in the distance, at the top of Fitzwilliam Street, the big arch was covered in balloons, as if it were the gateway to a frivolous party and not a portal to anything between two and five hours of guaranteed pain and loneliness.
Under that arch the elite runners – the omnipotent few who seem to glide these 26 miles – gathered and over the swelling field of runners drifted the sounds of the Garda Band playing Neil Diamond.
The runners sang cheerfully to the chorus of Sweet Carolineand it was obvious that everyone there felt somewhere between nervous and terrified.
A marathon race is wonderfully democratic. You cannot tell the millionaires from the dispossessed. Age does not matter: it is not a race which offers any dispensation to youth. There is no glamour and no vanity. There is nothing but a collective will to get to the other end.
And as usual, it attracts all kinds. And so there was a guy who figured the only appropriate attire with which to run through Dublin included a baby’s nappy, a pink leopard-skin tank top and a blonde wig. There was a guy running with an army pack strapped to his back. A guy painted like a tiger. And a guy who juggled three tennis balls for the entire course.
“Dropped them about four or five times in the last three miles,” Diarmuid Collins would lament some four hours later. “My left wrist just went stiff and it was like throwing a plank of wood. But the people cheering kept me going.”
He had been training for this October day since June and like many people it was a cause – the World Society for the Protection of Animals – that kept him going.
Even among the marathon field, he caught the eye. On his solitary training runs, which were always completed with the tennis balls, he drew a lot of searching looks.
“I had the cows staring at me. Dogs chasing me. I would pass pubs and people would be looking out thinking they had had a few too many.”
The strangest period of a marathon race happens about 11 minutes after the starting gun. By then, all of the runners have passed through the start line and shuffled out of sight. The band put their instruments away and the intense bank holiday quietness returned. Fitzwilliam Street was littered with thousands of discarded sweat shirts. There was no traffic. The place felt abandoned. One steward said cheerfully: “That’s it for another year.”
EXCEPT THAT IT wasn’t; not quite. On Merrion Street, volunteers were organising finishing packs for the heroes. They looked as surprised as anyone when two guys came trotting up past them. It was clear they were looking for the marathon. Equally clear was that they had got their times confused. Badly. They had, presumably, trained for this, prepared for this.
And yet with a casualness which could surely only happen at an Irish marathon, they got their time wrong. The phone conversation must have gone something like this.
“What time is this thing tomorrow?”
“Nineish. Half, I think. Nine would be mad early.”
“Sure I’ll meet ya at quarter past or so.”
It was twenty five to 10 when they ran under the arch, not a sinner around. By then, Moses Kibbet, the eventual winner, must have had six or seven miles down.
And so they ran a race of 13,000 people all by themselves.
But, of course, everyone is alone. Families, friends, charity organisations: they show up radiating a kind of invincible togetherness but at some mile or another comes the inescapable fact that they are on their own.
“You go light in the head,” gasped Owen Gahan (2hrs 37mins) thinking back to mile 18 when the real world began to fall away.
“My calves, my legs, everything went and I desperately wanted to walk,” said Trevor Hunt (2hrs 59mins). “But I just kept going, one step after the other.”
And these are the runners at the choice end of the field. It makes no difference. The marathon punishes everyone in different ways. The best keel over the railings and get sick just like the novices do. They too turn punch-drunk once they cross the line and hobble away, broken and ecstatic.
Others finish the race wearing the kind of beatific looks last seen when the statues jogged in Ballinspittle.
AS THE CLOCK ticked remorselessly to the four-hour mark, the runners began to sprint for home. To get through that line even seconds under four hours was to achieve something profound, some private victory.
And so one runner leaped and touched the clock as he finished with seconds to spare. Behind him, another pointed at those ticking seconds and pointed at it like it was a sworn enemy.
He laughed as he beat the four-hour watermark and shouted a delighted “F*** you” at Time itself and then his race was over. Many held their arms aloft like Gebrselassie.
Others seemed to be in a trance. Everyone looked to be in the grip of simultaneous agony and euphoria.
“Ahhh, felt great,” said Dave Brady from Kildare, who has run 164 of these days. Yesterday was his 27th marathon of the year. This was 25 years after his first Dublin marathon. He ran 3.11 then. He ran 3.24 yesterday. He is 60 years of age.
“Vegas and then on to Clonakilty,” he said dreamily of his next appointments with road-racing hell.
Vegas to Clonakilty might be a useful summary of what happens to people’s minds over the course of a marathon. Most seem altered in some way when they finally finish.
And it is a kind of magical thing to see what happens on this day. To walk along Trinity and see people applauding the runners, jaded and beat-up looking now, just for keeping going.
One spectator bought jellies and some energy drinks in a shop and held them out for the needy and the weak. He wasn’t a volunteer. He just wanted to help. That mood seldom visits any city but all along the route yesterday was a feeling of shared triumph.
After 4½ hours, thousands had come home, limping away with their sky-blue sweatshirts for promised baths or pints or whatever. Others were still racing to that magical line.
Some looked like they felt they would never see it.
Standing on the steps of the Clare Mont hotel, a little girl marvelled “They are still running, Nana.”
And she was right. Their race is never run.
