“Some of the runners crumple like wobbly colts”

MY INTEREST in sport — which doesn’t extend beyond egg and spoon events — has never once, in the 25 years of being married, encompassed standing as I do now, in a cordoned-off area next to the finishing line of a half-iron man race, in which my husband is taking part.

Though he’s crossed many finishing lines in his time, I haven’t seen him do it. Not until now.

This act of standing in the rain without an umbrella is one of atonement, a redemptive gesture for having been for years the sort of wife to congratulate her husband on the phone just after he’d run the Dublin Marathon thus: “That’s great. Can you get olives when you come through town? Green, remember, not black.”

After which — and he’s quite clear on this point — I told him all about my day.

I note there are no chairs on which spectators might sit but despite this fact, the atmosphere is very carnival; there are hundreds of supporters and lots of banner-waving spouses whom I doubt ever thought of asking their husbands to get olives after running marathons.

Spirits are high and so infectious that when the first five runners reach the finish line, I too am on tenterhooks and agog.

They bound over it … like springboks, I muse, leaping springboks that punch the air, smiling triumphantly.

‘The grace! The stamina! What bodies!’ I think, awed.

And then the second wave of competitors comes in; not quite springboks this time, more like… powerful young horses, galloping and sleek.

‘The strength! The resolve! What bodies!’ I think, inspired.

Some of the runners crumple like wobbly colts, parched. I watch the race marshals run around, feeding them slices of orange. The physiotherapy tent springs into action and the ambulance doors smack open as the third wave of runners appears around the corner.

These runners resemble older — but still — powerful horses and my husband’s white shorts are among them.

Half a mile away, they run uphill together towards the line, valiant and dogged.

I spot one runner out in front, a lean, lone athlete in funny leggings, putting one foot in front of the other, his exhausted eye on the finish-line, when all of a sudden he lists over to one side in alarming fashion, buckles and falls sideways into the ditch.

‘Christ alive,’ I think, ‘is he dead?’

Oh the drama and excitement! I hadn’t expected anything like this. Why had nobody told me it could be life or death?

I hold my breath.

There’s rustling in the ditch. Vegetation is astir. I can see an arm. It’s moving.

Not dead. Just cramp. I exhale.

He stumbles out of the ditch like an old stallion and in a weird, lopsided canter, makes for the line. Clutching his leg, he staggers over it to thunderous applause.

Orange-slice-bearing marshals catch him just before he keels over.

The atmosphere is thrumming with endorphins and spectators cheer as competitors reel across the line and subside onto the concrete, where they lie mute and gasping.

I look for the white shorts, worried now. My husband is as fit as a fiddle but 46. The runners spill over the line — each one in a state of worrying disrepair and it suddenly occurs to me that he might die.

‘I have four children,’ I think, ‘I’ll kill him if he dies… bloody kill him… where the hell is he?’

And then I spot him, his head up and his expression focused. A smile begins to split his face as he draws near the finish line.

I’m oddly overcome by elation. “Well done!” I hear myself scream suddenly, “come on! You can do it!” With a wide smile now, he pitches himself forward over the line and booms past, swallowed up by the throng of runners. Victorious and glorious!

“Oh my god,” I say, jubilant, “well done, that’s absolutely fantastic… and you made it in good time!”

I’m holding him upright. He’s still staring into the middle distance. “Well done,” I repeat — I’ve not forgotten I’m atoning — “that’s absolutely fantastic!”

And I do not tell him all about my day.