After just 10km of Sunday’s Düsseldorf Marathon Peter Lynch felt terrible, his hopes for a decent time sinking fast. Especially as the first rule of marathon running says it’s not the distance that kills, it’s the pace.
“Oh no,” he thought to himself. “This could be a very long day...if this pace already feels too hard.”
Slowly but steadily Lynch felt better, then felt pretty good. Despite running solo for most of the remaining 32km, just detached from the lead group, he moved up to third, finishing in 2:09:36 – and with that breaking the Irish men’s marathon record for only the fifth time in 45 years.
Lynch took six seconds off the previous record of 2:09:42, set last October by Hiko Tonosa when finishing third in Dublin. Before that Stephen Scullion ran 2:09:49 in London in 2020, breaking the long-standing Irish record of 2:09:56 set by John Treacy in 1984 when winning the silver medal in the LA Olympics. Treacy did run 2:09:15 in the 1988 Boston Marathon only that doesn’t count for record purposes due to the net downhill gradient of the Boston course.
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For Lynch it was his second race over the classic distance, and by his own admission the 27-year-old from Kilkenny is still only learning. In his marathon debut in October he finished in 2:17:40 – “a horrible experience which took a couple of years off my life” – and there is clear potential to go faster.
“I don’t know how long this Irish record will last, which is a good thing,” says Lynch, reflecting on his run back home in Kilkenny on Monday. “I am walking pretty slowly today, was hobbling around the airport earlier, and I won’t be running again for another week or 10 days. But I definitely think there’s more room for improvement next time.
“I was running solo from around 12km. But I was looking at my watch a lot, could see I was still being pretty consistent in my splits, so I wasn’t too worried, and thankfully I was able to lock into the same pace.
“The best I felt was 25-30km, had to make myself slow down a little bit, not go too crazy. I was growing in confidence too, and from 30km I felt really strong. When I ran Chicago, in October, I got to right around 30km, I went from feeling great to having to stop and walk a couple of times.”
In many ways Sunday’s race in Germany also mirrors Lynch’s progress as a distance runner. As a schoolboy athlete in St Kieran’s College in Kilkenny he was not a runaway success, but finished second in the All-Ireland Schools Cross-Country in his Leaving Cert year.
“At St Kieran’s John O’Keeffe, one of the teachers, was big into cross-country, and we’d actually have cross-country training at lunchtime on Monday and Friday, down to the Castle park for a few laps.
“There was a fun, team atmosphere to it, and that’s what got me into it. I was pretty useless until I got to transition year, then just started getting a little bit better each year. I played hurling also, for Dicksboro until my first year minor, but I wasn’t much good at that either.”
After one year at the University of Limerick, Lynch attended the University of Tulsa, in Oklahoma, where again his progress was steady but not sensational. After finishing a post-grad degree there this time last year, he reached out to Alistair Cragg, who broke multiple Irish records over the years. Cragg is now head coach, along with his wife Amy, at the Puma Elite Training Team, set up in 2021 and based in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Düsseldorf was won by his training partner at Puma, Alex Meier from the US clocking 2:08:32, and Lynch has no doubt the move has served him well.
“Alistair was pretty confident I could run a 2:09, but we didn’t really talk about the record. I wasn’t focusing on a specific time. The only focus was having a good race.”
Tonosa ran another 2:09:52 in Rotterdam earlier this month, and finishing one place behind Lynch on Sunday, Fearghal Curtin ran 2:11:35, his first marathon finish, moving to number 10 on the Irish all-time list. Last month Paul O’Donnell ran 2:10:17 in upstate New York, the fifth fastest on the all-time list.
Lynch’s 2:09:36 is a B-Standard for the Tokyo World Championships in September. If he gets that call he’ll certainly consider it.
Irish marathon record progression – the last 45 years
2:12:21: Louis Kenny, Rocket City Marathon, Alabama – December 1980
2:09:56: John Treacy, Los Angeles Olympics – August 1984
2:09:49: Stephen Scullion, London Marathon – October 2020
2:09:42: Hiko Tonosa, Dublin Marathon – October 2024
2:09:36: Peter Lynch, Düsseldorf Marathon – April 2025
