The morning after Nichola Sheridan was victorious in the Dublin City Half Marathon in March she brought the winning trophy into Scoil an Spioraid Naoimh in Laytown in Co Meath, where she teaches fourth class.
Dublin wasn’t her fastest time, or even her best race, but the moment her students saw that trophy, their eyes lit up in wonder.
“They were all getting pictures with it, to them, they think I’m going to the Olympics,” says Sheridan. “It’s great motivation for all of them. Every Monday they’ll ask, ‘did you have a race at the weekend?’ So it’s nice they have the interest, and I’ll talk all day about it.
“It definitely was a breakthrough moment, where it went viral, in that I’ve had lots of opportunities since with interviews, different events that I’ve been asked to go to. It just takes a high-profile event like that to take off.”
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Sheridan’s win in Dublin that day, clocked in 78 minutes flat, also marked a sort of born-again moment in her running career. By her own admission, that had ended during her teenage years, until reignited by the death of her father, Paschal, in 2015, after a long illness, when she was 18.
After some success in local races over the shorter distances with Bohermeen AC, Sheridan made her marathon debut in Dublin last October, where after a cautious start, she finished 14th overall, and fifth best Irish woman, in 2:42:57. Coached by former international David Carrie from Louth, a close friend of her late father, she‘s now confident of running a lot faster this October.
[ Inaugural Dublin City Half Marathon a runaway successOpens in new window ]
“I always ran as a child. Dad used to drop us in Navan, it was 4km away, and make us run home, me and my twin sister (Gillian). When my dad got sick, after the Leaving Cert, I started running as a crutch for my mental health, to get outside. He was quite weak and sick, but he still always asked me ‘how much did you run today?’ He was just really excited about it. In a race like the marathon, I definitely feel his presence with me.”
Speaking at a launch event for the 2025 Irish Life Dublin Marathon, set for Sunday, October 26th, Sheridan has little doubt her best marathon years are still to come. At 28, there is plenty of time to chase the Olympics too.
“If it were up to me, I would run a marathon every month, I really enjoy it. I’m trying to get my speed up so I’m doing 5km and 10km at the moment. It was my first marathon last year, I was a bit cautious; I had to protect myself a little bit. But David [Carrie] is very confident. I do put a lot of my trust in him.”
All 22,500 entries for the 2025 Dublin Marathon sold out just weeks after last October’s event, and race director Jim Aughney believes that size fits the city just fine for now, although there is clearly potential to grow.
“We learned a lot from the new start and finish last year,” he says. “And it’s now a matter of fine-tuning that for 2025, 2026, and when we see three years data on it, we can take it from there.
“We‘ve already sold out the 10km and half marathon build-up races, and the 10-mile will sell out too. So running is on a boom, I think, not just here in Dublin, but around the country. I think we‘re back to or better than pre-Covid.
“Between the transfer and the refund options, we got 1,500 more to the starting line last year than the year before [in 2023, about 6,000 entries did not take up their place on race day]. We‘ve also told people this is the last year of the priority code, where people who ran last year got a window and code to re-enter. We‘re hoping at the end of that we‘ll get even more to the start line of the 22,500 entries. Then we can look to see if we have room to grow or not.”
According to an independent Economic Impact Assessment conducted by UCD, the 2024 Dublin Marathon generated €23.79 million in economic impact.
“When you’re going in to talk to the city, you need a few statistics behind you,” says Aughney. “It just proves the value of the marathon to the city.”
