Taking part the ultimate yardstick

ATHLETICS/Dublin City Marathon: Hunter S Thompson said marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That's why Callaway sells golf clubs and Adidas sells running shoes. Because getting around can mean just as much as coming first.

"I want my finisher's T-shirt," Hunter would say. He'd make an annual trip to the Honolulu marathon intent on covering the 26.2-mile distance, despite his self-confessed drug and alcohol craze.

Hunter could probably be described as the average marathoner. Away from Olympics and world championships he'd fit right in with any big-city marathon. There's an open invitation. All shapes and sizes can apply, which they do.

The Dublin marathon has gone that way too. Not that it was really any different. With the exception of the few imported Africans, none of 10,000 starters in Monday's race have the slightest ambition of winning. But when it was first staged back in 1980 the majority of starters at least had a stopwatch on their wrist and well-toned muscles. They'd entered to run.

On Monday the majority will have dispensed with the stopwatches. Some will start with a bottle of water in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. They'll have done little competitive running, and one of their main tools of preparation will have been the treadmill. They've entered to survive.

Shortly after 11am, when the leading African is wrapped in warm clothes and holding the winner's cheque of €15,000, most of the field will still be strung out around the Phoenix Park and Crumlin Road and the leafy suburbs of Rathgar and Clonskeagh. Still trying to survive. It'll be four, five or six hours before they finish.

This is the very scene the Dublin marathon is embracing. Race director Jim Aughney has watched the race slowly transform itself over the past two decades, but the current model is the way forward. The marathon has become the challenge of the masses, but it's a challenge nonetheless.

"We've definitely seen a gradual drift from those completing the thing in under three hours," says Aughney. "And it's a long way from the races of the early 1980s. Part of that is because people haven't got the time or just aren't willing to put the effort in. But then it's the way our lifestyle has gone as well, and that nowadays kids are only getting one class of PE a week.

"Right now maybe half the field are finishing between the three-hour and 4-hours-45 mark, but that's drifting out every year by a couple of minutes. But I don't think that has taken anything away from the challenge of the marathon. I believe it is still a great achievement for anyone to cross the finish line of a marathon, whether it's in two-and-a-half hours or five-and-a-half hours."

Spiridon Louis ran two hours, 58 minutes and 50 seconds to win the 1896 Olympic marathon, which for the first time retraced the historical path from the town of Marathon to Athens. And that included a few stops along the way for refreshment.

John Walshe of Cork has a marathon best of 2:37:59 and is part of the select group of 34 who have finished all 25 of the Dublin marathons to date. He has witnessed first hand how the quality of runners has gradually declined. Still, he runs again on Monday knowing the race still has much to offer.

"There's no doubt the general standard has gone down," says Walshe. "When I first came to marathon running most people were from a club-running background. You have very little of that now. So you have far fewer people who have actually done the training to get under three hours.

"I think the majority these days are coming from the health-club background, who've only ever experienced the mass participation of the sport. And they're much more likely to be finishing between four and five hours. And we have become more accepting of those standards, that people just want to get around. So in that sense I think a lot of the marathon diehards have gone."

Aughney has no problem with that. In fact the Dublin marathon is particularly welcoming of such entrants, and its eight-hour cut-off is the most generous in the business.

"That means the course is closed off to traffic for a full eight hours after the start," explains Aughney. "Most other cities open it again after five or six hours - that's because we want to give everyone the chance to finish it. Even the walkers wouldn't take any longer than six-and-a-half hours.

"But even when we open the roads again we don't come along and put a big barrier across the finish. People are just told to move onto the footpaths, but the finish line is one of the last things to stay up."

Back in 1999 an American entrant arrived home at 11.30 that Monday night. He had a good excuse though. He'd covered the 26.2 miles on stilts.

"I can tell you," adds Aughney, "he got a rousing welcome.

"And we would certainly embrace that element of the race. In fact we build the event around it, and include things like music out on the course so they're not left there running on empty roads. We also have things like the Marathon Expo over the weekend, and the international breakfast run on the Sunday, none of which existed 10 years ago. We're always trying to make it more user-friendly for everyone involved and are definitely treating it as an event much more so than a competition.

"You also have to consider things like the increase in the charity aspect of the race. That does make up a large part of the numbers, and they're primarily out there to raise funds for their chosen charity. And that means getting to the end, not in under three hours."

Although winning on Monday is out of the question for all but a handful (look out for Semeretu Alemayehu, Tseko Mpolokeng - Onesmus Kilonzo maybe) the elite end of the race is not being ignored either. Aughney reckons he was more delighted than anyone when Jerry Kiernan's race record of 2:13:45, set in 1982, was finally broken last year by Lezan Kimutai of Kenya, who posted 2:13:08.

"Bringing quality runners to Dublin is still very important. We want to prove that fast times can be run here, because ultimately that will attract more elite runners. Especially with the prize money to go with it.

"No one was more delighted than me to see the course record broken last year, and I still think we can get a 2:10 or 2:11 performance out of Dublin."

Walshe, however, believes the race up front is largely ignored these days - particularly with the Irish interest gone so thin.

"I think the fact that we don't have any Irish contenders up there anymore has taken something away from it. I remember being around the Mansion House the day before the race and meeting the likes of Dick Hooper and Jerry Kiernan and Neil Cusack and that always added to the hype. Instead we have a bunch of Kenyan names now that mean nothing. So I don't think the general public care as much about the race as they used to.

"But I think we're experiencing the second of the road-running booms in this country. We saw the first one in the early 1980s, when the numbers running Dublin topped that 10,000 mark. That dropped to less than 3,000 in the early 1990s, but over the last four or five years we're experiencing the second, especially with the number of women now competing.

"The Dublin marathon has changed a lot, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily for the worse. I think the course they've had for the past two years has been the best yet. I think it's presented now so that there's something in it for everyone."

So that's it: 10,000 starters on Monday and all with their own reason for running. The only thing they really have in common is that they've as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would of scoring a winning conversion at Lansdowne Road. They mightn't have won the marathon, or even run it, but they'll have done it.

2004

Entrants10,050

Finishers8,537

Sub-two hours, 30 minutes22

Sub-three hours233

Sub-four hours2,795

Sub-five hours6,017

Over five hours2,520

1981 (second year of race)

Entrants6,817

Finishers6,490

Sub-two hours, 30 minutes 41

Sub-three hours 608

Sub-four hours 3,977

Sub-five hours6,148

Over five hours342