Tommy Martin: Compromising on the road to my horizon

BACK ON THE ROAD: Darren Hodgins, from Dublin, competes in the 2022 Irish Life Dublin Marathon. 25,000 runners took to the Fitzwilliam Square start line to participate in the 41st running of the Dublin Marathon after a two-year absence. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

The first rule about marathon running is you don’t talk about marathon running. Or at least it is in my house.

My wife made it clear a long time ago that she sees the whole marathon thing as a big waste of time. All those long runs, recovery runs, interval runs; just runs, runs, runs, hours and hours of them for months before the big day. Think what you could be doing with that time. 

And not even learning conversational French or exploring quantum mechanics. She means painting that fence or clearing out that bloody shed. 

The true challenges of life.

We were somewhere around Kimmage on the edge of Terenure when the despair began to take hold. It is my first attempt at the Dublin Marathon and it has occurred to me that she might be right.

Maybe it is all pointless, this middle-aged trudge around city streets, grinding your joints into bonemeal and for what? There are simpler ways to get fit, things that involve an hour being shouted at in a sweaty room and a nice smoothie on the way home. There are other ways to achieve things. You could write a poem. You could translate Beowulf. You could clear out that bloody shed.

Now, I had just seen Niall Quinn on the Walkinstown Roundabout. But was it really him? Maybe it was a vision. He was clapping everybody that passed: big, generous claps that put wind in your sails. He gave me a wave and a shake of the fist like after he put that one past Hans Van Breukelen at Italia ‘90. Was he really there? Was he a biological defence mechanism? Is that what the brain does when the body wants to shut down? Send in big Niall?

This was about mile 15 and miles are cruel bastards. Kilometres slink by like episodes of Friends on Netflix. Miles are geological epochs. They are imperial things: dusty, long and impenetrable like a Victorian novel with tiny writing that goes on forever and you can’t remember who any of the characters are.

It was different early on. Spirits were high in Stoneybatter, where the discerning locals took leave of their buckwheat pancakes to cheer on the cascade of humanity tripping up towards Phoenix Park. They love us and we love ourselves too. Sure, aren’t we doing the marathon? “This is a lot of work for a free banana!” one wry funster informs us via a homemade sign. Hah! Very good. I like that.

In the park I am overtaken by an Elvis impersonator, dashing up Chesterfield Avenue as if late for his Vegas encore (I know this was definitely an Elvis impersonator as the mind had not been overtaken by celebrity hallucinations). “Wise men say, only fools rush in!” I think of quipping but don’t because, frankly, he is too fast for me.

He fits my mood though, this speed merchant in the sequinned jumpsuit. 

I have assembled a playlist of feelgood oldies, stuff from before the 1970s oil crisis, never mind the current one. I figure marathons are not a good place for doom-laden indie and introspective singer-songwriters. 

Instead, Glen Campbell is singing Rhinestone Cowboy as we hit Castleknock and we’re riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo and the cheering crowds line the streets round the corner down toward College Road and I’m gonna be where the lights are shining on meee…!

Around the ten-mile mark coming out of Chapelizod there is a hill that starts and never really seems to stop. Here I find Elvis struggling, as if the race is a passion play of his mercurial career. “Heartbreak Hotel, eh Elvis?” I think of saying but don’t because, well, you know.

Hills upon hills between here and UCD but the crowds get bigger and they are pouring out their hearts to us as our bodies break down and our spirits weaken. Inchicore, South Circular Road, Dolphins Barn, Crumlin. Somebody else is holding up a sign saying, “This is a lot of work for a free banana!” and I feel sad that it wasn’t an original gag. They are handing out jellies and fig rolls and bananas and slices of orange. Why are they here? What is this for, this great, big, happy Via Dolorosa?

Around me other runners have names of lost loved ones and charity causes on their t-shirts. They are offering this up to the universe, raising money but also making a sacrifice, symbolic but sure. Doesn’t suffering have to mean something? So what am I doing it for?

Suddenly, he is there beside me. Glen Campbell, riding up Clonskeagh Road on a white horse and all dressed in white too like in the ridiculous 1975 video for Rhinestone Cowboy.

“Glen, you’re dead,” I say, when he doffs his Stetson.

“Lotta folks passed on running this race today, buddy,” he smiles.

“But you’re on a horse?” 

“Ain’t nuthin’ in the rules against it!” 

“Pretty sure that’s not true, but anyway. What’s the point Glen? I’m in pain here. I’m just doing it for the sake of it, I’m not even going to run the time I wanted. Look at you, you look amazing up there, all in white. I look like shit!” 

“Buddy, I was drinkin’ and druggin’ like crazy in them Rhinestone Cowboy years. But I got through ‘em, thanks to the good Lord and the most expensive rehab money could buy. Hell, it’s in the song kid. There’ll be a load of comprimisin’ on the road to my horizon. Now git, go on!” 

At the finish line in Merrion Square I hobble to journey’s end. The photos show that I come home among a cluster of much older, much fresher-looking men. I’m still not sure what the point is, but I figure it’s not my last rodeo, star-spangled or otherwise. There’s no sign of Elvis, but later on I see a picture of him on Twitter after the race and he is smiling and sipping a coffee and I feel happy for the both of us.