Marathon feet: 10,000 runners mark race’s record-breaking silver jubilee

FORTY minutes after the winner strode to victory, the real race began. The race for personal bests, the race against exhaustion, the race against the odds.

Runner after amateur runner ran, limped, staggered and slumped across the finish line.

Some punched the air, some yelped with delight, some smiled in disbelief and others grimaced in agony.

One man knelt and kissed the ground like a pilgrim finally reaching a sacred place after a long and tortuous journey in the unwelcome company of nagging self-doubt and burgeoning blisters.

A woman crossed the line confidently, waved off offers of help from waiting stewards, spotted the open arms of her family and burst into tears in an emotional explosion of pain, relief and, probably, the dread that everyone will expect her to do the same next year.

The Dublin City Marathon marked its silver jubilee in style yesterday with a 22-year high entry of more than 10,000 and a record-breaking win by Kenyan athlete, Lezan Kimutai, who knocked 37 seconds off Gerry Kiernan’s 1982 best by finishing in two hours, 13 minutes and eight seconds.

But it was the small triumphs that turned the event into a mammoth celebration of endeavour and endurance. Monaghan accountant and Irish Blindsports activist Tony Ward finished the course with his sighted guide in just over three hours.

John Walsh from Cork, organiser of the annual Ballycotton 10, created a new event, the John Walsh 25, after completing his 25th outing in the competition.

The legendary Eamon Coughlan raised €1 million for Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children after persuading 700 runners to run with him for the cause. Soap star Tony Audenshaw may never win an Oscar for his role as Bob Hope in Emmerdale, but finishing in under three hours and raising money for leukaemia research was even better.

“It’s freezing,” said one marathon widow, leafing through a magazine as she waited for her beloved to appear. “I think I’ll have to run it next year.” Just then a wobbly-legged runner collapsed into the arms of a steward and was brought off in a wheelchair. “Or then again, maybe not.”