Connemara marathon - just you, nature, and your mind

ON ATHLETICS: LIFE IS returning to the big city. The park smells of freshly-cut grass. A bird sings on a telephone wire. It's bright outside after teatime. It must be the start of the spring marathon season.

From now until the end of May, you could run a marathon in practically any city you fancy. Provided you’ve signed up already. Paris, London, Boston, Rotterdam, Madrid, Hamburg, Vienna, Zurich – and they’re only the ones I know off the top of my head.

Tomorrow alone there are several big city marathons taking place with a combined entry of almost 50,000. In Rome, around 15,000 runners will line up next to the Coliseum and start on their 26.2-mile jaunt around the Eternal City – hoping, naturally, that it won’t be an eternally painful experience.

Another 80,000 are expected for the Roma 4.2km Fun Run, which starts simultaneously, and together with the 15,000 in the marathon, makes this the largest participation sporting event in Italy. Not even the Pope’s blessings attract that kind of crowd.

On up the coast the Monte Carlo marathon will have about 2,000 runners, while on the other side of the planet there’s the Tokyo marathon. Three years ago Tokyo opened itself to the masses, and as you would expect for a marathon-mad country like Japan, it created mass hysteria. Organisers set a limit of 30,000 but that didn’t meet the demand. The race to secure an entry became a flat-out sprint.

But marathon running is no longer confined to the big city. There is an increasing interest in running into the wild – and if that’s the kind of marathon you’re after they don’t come much better than Connemara. Except that it’s too late for this year. Tomorrow’s race, which has a maximum entry of 3,600, has been full since December, and like U2 at Croke Park, they could have sold the thing out several times over.

Connemara is actually split into three distances: the half marathon, the marathon, and the 39.3-mile ultra marathon. Last year I ran the half marathon and such was the sheer euphoria experienced running through that richly empurpled landscape known as Joyces Country that I swore I’d be back this year (until I broke a toe on a recent surfing trip).

Race director Ray O’Connor says he could have sold at least 7,000 entries, if only there were room for them all. “Our strict restriction on numbers has annoyed a lot of people who have missed out,” he admits, “and they are getting nastier by the minute. But hey, it’s a good complaint, I guess.

“Sure the mountains, lakes, scenery make a fantastic backdrop, but there is something much deeper in our field of runners, which we attribute to the unique bonding that takes place within the hour before race start.”

But don’t take our word for it. One man who knows all about running Connemara is Johnny Donnelly, not just because he lives nearby. Some of you may remember Donnelly as the original drummer in the Irish folk-rock band The Saw Doctors.

Or you may remember him as that slightly mad-sounding Galway man who this time last year set himself the task of running at least one marathon every month for the four next years.

Donnelly had a simple yet profound cause; running to help end extreme poverty. His charity, Sea Change, engage in micro-finance, the process of giving small loans to help lift people out of poverty in the long-term. Since finishing the Seville marathon a year ago, he has now completed marathons in Cape Town, Turin, Prague, Norway, Namibia, Helsinki, Longford, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Dublin, New York, Lisbon and Dubai.

Last month he set out to run the Death Valley marathon in the US, which would make it 16 marathons in 12 months – roughly on schedule to complete 68 marathons in 48 months. He’d left the family cottage in the old famine village of Toorard, drove the five hours to Dublin airport, and boarded his long-haul flight to Atlanta.

Then it started snowing. That was the weekend of the worst snowfall in Dublin in 18 years, and Donnelly’s flight was cancelled until the following day. “No good,” he thought. “There’s no way I’m going to make it to Death Valley on time.”

So he drove the five hours back home, making a few phone calls along the way. He needed to find a marathon to run somewhere, and by chance, a small group from Athenry Athletic Club intended on running part of Connemara in preparation for the actual race. One of them, Mick Rice, agreed to do the whole thing.

They took their time and had a most enjoyable run, stopping only to rescue a sheep that Donnelly had spotted half submerged in a freezing lake. He’ll be back on the Connemara course tomorrow for marathon number 17, and from there it’s back to Cape Town, then to London, then Belfast, Pisa, the Inca Trail marathon, the Swiss Alpine marathon, and so on to December 2011.

“I’ve had the experience of travelling around the world with the band, and now with running, but when you arrive in Connemara, it must be one of the most beautiful marathons in the world.

“And it’s completely different from any other marathon I’ve done. I see it as a holistic marathon, because you’ve got no real distraction when you’re out there. There are no great crowds cheering you on like New York. There is only you, nature, and your mind. Some might say the three worst combinations. I mean Stephen King would make movies in your head during this race. And that’s what’s beautiful about it.

“It’s also the first time I don’t have to worry about being far from home. There’s no way I’m not going to finish this challenge. I don’t mean that in an egotistical way, but my whole focus is to get through this and raise money. The hardest part is being away from family and catching up with work when I get back.”

Even Connemara presents a logistical challenge. After leaving the Saw Doctors, he took over the entertainment company Arcana. They’re the background act for Bernard Dunne’s title fight at the O2 Arena this evening, and Donnelly will be one of the 15 drummers on show.

He won’t get out of the O2 until 1.30 in the morning. He’ll drive straight to Connemara, sleep in the car for an hour, get up, register and run 26.2 miles.

“That’s typical of the way things have been. I’m not a full-time athlete. I’ve got a business to run. Fund-raising has been difficult too. Any money we raise goes directly to Sea Change. So it’s been about getting through, hopping on a plane for nine hours after running a marathon. That’s not pleasant, but this is not meant to be pleasant.”

Over Christmas, his one year-old son Harry suffered another near-fatal illness – the second since his birth. That reinforced Donnelly’s commitment to his cause.

“Human life is invaluable. That’s partly what this is about, realising that there’ll always be worse off than us. That’s what annoys me about this talk of recession. I feel sorry for the people who have lost their jobs, but none of us are going hungry.

There is hope around the corner, places for us to go. But three billion people on the planet don’t have any hope or anywhere to go.”

(Keep up with Johnny Donnelly’s marathon challenge on www.runjohnnyrun.ie)