Dublin Marathon 2026 | Born to be Wild

Introduction

I volunteered at the Dublin Marathon 2025. I met Dick Hooper (three time marathon champion) at Connolly Station that morning ready for action. The Dart what little of it was available was now fully off. Dick summoned his inner champion immediately. He told us “your friends need you Be Tough! and get to your volunteer posts”. I needed no encouragement and ran to my post on Nutley Lane. I didn’t know it then but those words ‘Be Tough!’ I would need them over and over again in 2026 and not just to finish the Dublin Marathon. The strongest headwinds for 26 years were not on my radar another PB was. I wasn’t expecting my children to bring home every form of plague from creche in the eight weeks leading up to the Marathon nor was I expecting to repeatedly capitulate to it every time. My training block had illness followed by hamstring niggles, chaffing (how on earth I made that mistake again I still can’t figure out) and other storms. Our training group ran for 3 hours around St Annes park in the lashing rain to reach 32 km on one of our final long runs. I battled my way through the first public sector strike in 15 years and by the time I got to race day there wasn’t any energy left. There was however the dogged determination not to give up. Once Storm Boelo had decided to leave the wind for us to marathon with I wrote the battle plan on my phone….FINISH !!! and got on with it.

Politics resurrection

I have no idea how I ever ended up involved in politics and current affairs. Way back in college when I started seeing it up close it was me and my friend Daithí trying to progress student issues. When I met my wife I could see what it meant to really represent a community and advocate for them and every time we went to solve a problem there were no sprints they were all marathons.

I caught my daughter in the corridor as Julie delivered her into this world in January 2026. Clara received precisely one public health nurse appointment before I got a letter saying Clara would receive no further public health appointments due to staff shortages in Coolock primary care center. I stuck my head down and drove on. I stuck with ‘Be Tough!’. I had no intention of trying to fix the health service, Julie and I could watch our daughters development milestones and visit the GP as required. Others wouldn’t be so capable but our time advocating for the health of an area was now seven years ago. Julie and I had different lives now and those lives were private. Fast forward to two weeks before the marathon and I was in the office mobilising the Fórsa Union I had joined two weeks earlier. I couldn’t believe it the Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers had somehow messed up the childcare subsidy, tax and the public sector pay deal all in the same week. Julie and I had left that political shit storm behind us four years ago. Our duty was to our respective government departments and the policy set by the elected representatives. I avoided union involvement kept my head down, lived my life and worked my way up the civil service leadership ladder. I had made new friends and the camaraderie in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine was second to none. I had begun to organise social events mostly a quick drink after work but at least once we went wild and visited the Guinness Storehouse on our own time and dime. As the lack of Public Sector talks drifted I found myself in the centre of my friends asking what is going on? Are you in the union? I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I could feel the direction the political wind was blowing. It wasn’t good but there was still time to solve the issue. The second I heard Michael Martin and Jack Chambers state that they felt people wanted to strike more than talk I joined the union. I’d had enough at that point. It was time to speak the truth to power. I felt pushed and it was easy to get fired up over the public health nurse. That was for Clara. Clara was happy always smiling but she was being let down. She hadn’t even seen the turn of a calendar and she was already being let down. Every time Martin or Chambers spoke on the matter more of my friends joined Fórsa. The politicians had lost the room, the entire street and most of the countries backbone but they kept trying to spin the narrative. If I had been on commission for union memberships I would have made a killing. I helped six people join in one morning. And then the problems came pouring out of people like a flood. They couldn’t get on the property ladder. They needed loans to pay bills. They were in arrears on their heating bills, rent and/or car loans. The same stuff Julie and I had helped people with seven years ago was still grinding people down. Now it really looked like they had no one listening to them not to mind help them. There was always dialogue when I was involved. My office colleagues went from tangential members to mobilised Fórsa members in a matter of days. Our picket Captain reported that 7,000 new members had joined Fórsa in the weeks leading to the strike. I met Eoin Hayes TD from the Soc Dems the day before the strike coming into Leinster House. For those who don’t know Eoin was UCC Student Union President back in my UCC days. We shared a joke that nothing had changed since our Student fees protests 15 years ago other than we were now inside the various mechanisms of government fighting our way to better. Politics feels like that bloody vortex sometimes it’s the same people running at the challenges of the day. It was quite clear from our understanding that if the Taoiseach and Minister for Public Expenditure thought this was going to be sprint the union were going to turn it into a marathon. A marathon they could win. On Dublin Marathon day I was pulling the dust off my marathon shoes to reach ten marathons. I didn’t want anything to do with politics anymore. I was required to be impartial and but slowly I’d slipped into this trap of losing basics for my children. I could here my Dads voice in my head “losing happens, not trying hard enough to win is a choice”. My long standing hatred of losing erupted. If Chambers wanted a fight I was already faster than him at parkrun I’d beat him before and I was marathon strong with a union rowing in behind me. I got after the cause with the lads. If there was a union member to be won I got up out of my chair and asked them to join. Most were reluctant like me but they very quickly responded to the social media coverage completely aghast by the remarks from the Taoiseach and Minister. The lads manned the picket embracing a three commute with no childcare to make sure there voice was heard. They showed that they could be tough and do hard things.

10 Years Later

As I was slowly adapting to Clara in my life on paternity leave I read this great book The Path She Runs by Jen Benson. Jen wrote at one point that;

'It always frustrates me that women are asked how they manage to fit running around their children, whereas no one ever asks men that question.’ Jen Benson The Path She Runs

For me things are different. This is the second question I get asked by my friends. The first one is when are you moving back to Cork? Jens perspective is not my lived experience but I accept what she is saying as truth. We need to do better. I do however have the photographs, strava maps and parkruns to show that Edward and Clara came with me as I ran all over the country. The idea that I or any other parent needs to fit running around their children simply wasn’t the way to go for me. I promised myself in the months leading up to Edwards birth that I’d teach him one of the most important values in this life directly via running….BE A FINISHER. When I found out I was about to have a daughter I told my wife Clara learns the exact same value as Edward, entered the Dublin Marathon 2026 and bought a double buggy for parkrun. Jen spoke about the children not being relevant in the description of the race winner. I disagree. My Wife and two kids give me purpose. If I win something which is unlikely and the race report doesn’t refer to me as a hardworking family man I’ve been misrepresented. I’m a father first. With 1000 meters to go in the Dublin Marathon 2026 I was greeted by my wife and children and that will remain one of the sweetest memories of my life. Ten years since Julie and I had first attended the Dublin Marathon and there we are still striving together for better. I still have that vision of the kids crossing a finish line with me. It started with them as babies but now it’s growing into them running with me now.

Julie and I Ten years later

Marching around a marathon

There is no separating me from my family in any running event. Marathon running is a lifestyle anything shy of embracing it fully aligned to your family values will be extremely difficult. You don’t need this barrier. Get alignment and benefit from it. It takes a lot of work but it adds meaning to my relationship with my family.

Race

Storm Boelo hit Ireland the night before the Marathon bringing strong head winds. I was down to option C in my mental game plan FINISH. I could still hear Dick Hooper from 2025 “Be Tough”. This was going to be harder than other Dublin Marathon I had run. I threw the time out the window. I was going to have fun out there. Phoenix park wasn’t as bad as I thought. Sure the wind blew but it wasn’t the worst for me. The Crumlin road became my nemesis. The new shopping centre is lovely and the crowd deserve a medal for standing out there all day in that 44 km/h wind supporting us lunatics but my god those miles lasted forever against that wind. They sapped my energy. At 35 km into the marathon my Quads started niggling then spasming. I was walk jogging for a few miles. Lisa McCarthy so often the glue of our Raheny Shamrocks long runs gave me a boost of encouragement at mile 23 and I got running again. I was in pain when Graham Meikle caught up with me down by the RDS but yet the boost of seeing a friend right at the death gave me just a little bit of forward momentum.

Next with 1000 meters to go I heard Julies voice and the sweetest moment of my life so far came into being.

As I ran onto the purple mat to finish I posed with my hands indicating ten for ten marathons. Suddenly I heard a loud thump and an audible gasp from the crowd. I turned and seen a marathoner lying fave down on the ground. I’d had this happen at the city half marathon earlier in the year and this time I wasn’t waiting for help. I ran back I took Philips arm and escorted him over the finish line. The poor guy was worse for wear but he was still walking forward a testament to his drive and determination to finish on what would be his 22nd marathon with a PB no less. The Dublin Marathon First Aid crew had a wheelchair ready and first aid on hand. I walked off to celebrate finishing 10 marathons. I couldn’t believe it everything had tried to stop me finishing and yet with my family there in support I FINISHED.

Course

Conclusion

I can still do very hard things