No sporting event delights in the long countdown more than the big city marathon. It doesn’t matter whether you’re training to win the thing or simply finish, it’s all about embracing the months and weeks in advance to ensure the smoothest possible run on the day.
There’s no such thing as any short cut either, only the 26.2 miles, 42.2km or 138,000ft between the start and the finish. After all the training is done the hardest part can be the wait before that day, especially when that day has been a part of your life, for the best part of it, going back to 1980.
You never really know what you’ve got until it’s gone. It has been three years since the last staging of the Dublin Marathon, on the last Sunday in October of 2019, before the pandemic shut it all down.
By then, the 40th staging of the event, only 13 hardy runners had started and finished them all; by now, there’s only seven looking to start and finish number 41 this Sunday. Mary Nolan Hickey is still the only woman, and Martin Kelly the youngest of the six men who have an unbroken record in the race since the first on the October bank holiday Monday in 1980.
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Almost a third of the 2,100 starters in 1980 failed to finish the race. This year’s entry of 25,000 are essentially the same runners who signed up for the 2020 event; few sought the refund offered with the postponements. Hickey and Kelly certainly understand what the loss of a target, in 2020 and again last year, meant in their lives. And also what it means to have it back.
They still have mixed feelings about Sunday, which is perfectly natural given some of the challenges in trying to run every Dublin Marathon, every year, since 1980; and not just running it, but finishing it.
“Things could be lot better,” says Hickey. “I’ve had Covid twice now, going back to the beginning of it, still everything was going grand up until about five months ago, when my Achilles’ just went. Then I got a chest infection, but I’m not whinging… I’ve been getting treatment on the Achilles’, it’s just there’s no training done.
“Still I’ve every intention on being on the start line on Sunday, seeing what happens. It will be a mystery tour. People ask me, ‘Why even go when you’re injured’, but if I don’t go then it’s done. There’s no starting this again. If I don’t get through it this time I’ll never do Dublin again.”
Hickey makes no secret of the fact she’s 70 now, the Arklow woman overcoming plenty of obstacles before in getting to that finish line. In September of 1984, her 27-year-old brother died of cancer. That year’s race was tough, as was 1988, which she finished while 6½ months pregnant.
Tougher still was the 1997 race, which followed the tragic death of her 20-year-old son the August before. In 2017, her ex-husband Tony Hickey, who had also run every Dublin Marathon, was diagnosed with three brain tumours, and she helped him get around that year’s race in a wheelchair, before his death in June 2018.
“Funny, I was still very strong mentally those years,” she says, “even though physically I wasn’t. The head and the body are wobbly this year. It happens, we’re all getting older, it’s going to stop at some stage. It’s a silly old record, really, but once this record is done, it’s done.
“I was really gunning for it last year, gunning for it again on Sunday, just not gunning very well. I just want to get to the start, make the finish before the cut-off (which is seven hours), and if I manage that I’ll be celebrating like I won the bloody thing. I used to be one of those people who said I’d never hobble around at the very back, but I’m happy to hobble around now.”
Hickey considers Sunday her 43rd consecutive Dublin, given she finished both virtual races, in 2020 and 2021: “I actually enjoyed those runs. The first one was still within the 5km radius, around Arklow, we finished at the Tesco carpark for the pleasure of a takeaway cup of coffee, which is all we could get.
“Last year we ran in Kildare, a group who actually put on a small marathon the same day as Dublin. Getting Covid in the beginning, that really hit my breathing, again earlier this year. That’s definitely left its effect, on the breathing, I’m on two inhalers now. But I’m going to be very careful, I know not to push myself too hard either.”
A member of Parnell Athletics Club, based in Rathdrum, she’s among the 16 club runners coming up on a minibus that morning: “I think the two years without the marathon took its toll on some people, it’s a big thing in their lives. It was a hard decision to postpone, but I think a good decision.
“This is the make or break, if the streak ends here it’s obviously over, I just don’t feel it’s over yet. I do have an end date in my own head, if I do stay on the right side of the soil.
“Of the 40 in Dublin, I’d say only five or six were very difficult. The rest were all okay, soaking up the crowds, so it’s mostly been great. But this one is definitely worrying me the most. I’m doing what I would totally advise anyone else in my situation not to do. My advice to them would be, ‘forget it, forget it, forget it…’. Instead I’m going to the start with only one ambition. It’s crazy, but why not?”
Kelly was just 18 when he ran and finished the first Dublin Marathon in 1980 and, like Hickey, has had to overcome some obstacles to finish in all the years since. Not having a race for the last two years in no way dimmed his appetite to go again, and if anything has enhanced the motivation among his fellow Raheny runners too.
“Training has gone well, probably better than the last two years, and touch wood I managed to stay injury free,” he says. “It’s hard to believe it’s three years, all that’s happened since, and having it back is a great way to refocus, getting people back into the discipline of running a real race, and having all the support and encouragement along the way on the day itself.”
He also ran and finished both virtual events which, like wet pubs and takeaway pints and Zoom parties, no one wants to hear about again: “It’s absolutely not the same, no atmosphere, nothing compares to the real thing. It just kept a few of us running it though, being able to meet up in small groups, when all other sporting facilities were a no-go.
“I certainly saw a lot more people getting involved in running during lockdown, setting up small running groups too which are still going, around St Anne’s Park, and the sea front. But it was absolutely the right decision, to postpone. At the time we were all disappointed, but if you think of the pressure it would have put on the medical services.”
If Kelly does finish on Sunday, the hope is his finishing streak will continue.
“You do think maybe I’ll stop at 50 [marathons], but when this time comes around every year, I’d hate to think of a year where I wasn’t getting ready for it, or not being fit or healthy to run it.
“It’s like getting ready for an exam, you always think you could have prepared a little more. But I’m certainly as excited for this one as any other.
“Running also became such an important part of people’s mental health over the last two years or so, and the marathon is an extension of that in some ways, helps keeps them going, having a goal and a focus that they mightn’t otherwise have.”
