Kenneally took the right step

It is a strange individual that enjoys the torture of marathon running.

It is not something that the human body is designed for but millions of people run them all over the world every year.

Mark Kenneally comes across as a normal man in every way. He got married on New Year’s Eve and is a physiotherapist. But he has a quirk, or as he says himself an “insanity”. He loves the marathon.

The 31-year-old from Celbridge has been competing at international level for the guts of a decade but, while he has been good enough to run qualifying times, he couldn’t compete at the major championships.

What’s more, his body was breaking down under the workload, with illness and injury taking its toll on his lean 6’4” frame. That happened again in 2010, having finished eighth in the World Cross-Country Championships and set a number of PBs on the track the previous year.

It might sound odd that a step up to the marathon was advised by the sports scientists but while the workload might be increased, it is much less intensive and thus easier on the body.

The Olympic marathon will actually be only his third run over the 26.2 miles. The first came in Vienna in April 2011 and he was on course to secure the A standard before hitting the dreaded wall.

Lessons were learned, tweaks were made and in Amsterdam six months later, the time was cleared by more than a minute (2:13:55), even though a mix-up with his water bottles caused him to cramp approaching the finishing stretch. He celebrated with his stag the following day.

Even though there was a slight risk that what eventually happened to Maria McCambridge – being the odd one out of four qualifiers – could occur, Kenneally decided his next marathon would be at the Olympics.

Competing in the 10,000m at the European Championships on July 1 was ideal speed work. Yes, 10k speed work! It’s all relative, when you’re talking about the marathon.

Had he not travelled to Helsinki, Kenneally would have been done a 6x2k track session or a hard six-mile tempo. He was a little disappointed with the 15th place finish but the race served its purpose.

“I’m lucky that I didn’t have to do a marathon since last October so I’ve had a nice, long, steadier build-up. Sometimes if you commit to a 12-week marathon build-up it can sometimes be squashed a bit too much.

“It’s allowed for a steadier progression and I feel that I’m getting more improvements because of that. I’m really happy with where I’m at. I think I’m in as good a shape as I’ve ever been.

“I took the chance. There were people going again in March and April so if three people had run faster than me I was going to be knocked out but I felt my preparation would benefit from a longer build-up so that’s the way I went.”

There are numerous reasons why he is making his Olympic debut this weekend. The support structure provided by the Irish Institute of Sport — headed by the Gary Keegan, who laid the groundwork for Irish boxing’s success – is pretty close to the top of the list.

“Because of my background, where I’m a physio, I would be looking at different performance analysis type of stuff and I was trying to put it all together myself in the past.

“Now that I’ve got access to this, it is literally a case of the whole training programme makes sense from a progressive point of view so it’s working brilliantly for me.

“What had been happening [was] you go out for a hard session and you’re thinking about ‘should I be doing this the day after I did something yesterday?’ or ‘I’ve got something tomorrow that I need to think about as well’. Whereas now, it’s all planned out, it’s structured nicely so I can just concentrate on doing what I need to do every day.”

He has cycled around the course and while it is challenging, London city centre doesn’t have too many hills. “It’s just marathon distance that’s going to be the biggest challenge. It’s still 26 miles no matter where you run it.”

He’s laughing out loud, displaying a healthy dose of black humour.

“It’s a long way racing. Running at that sort of pace, for that length of time, at some point” – he laughs again – “it’s gonna’ hurt. You don’t need to bring it on too early.”

Kenneally looks at what is ahead of him realistically. If it were a normal big city marathon, he wouldn’t stand a chance. But major championships are different. World records aren’t the target. Medals are. That means times are slower. That gives more runners a chance. Runners like him.

“In a big city marathon, you’re standing on the start, there might be 40 Kenyans and the race director just wants a world record.

“So it’s put a pacemaker in, 40 Kenyans will go chasing a world record for the first half, 35 of them will die and five of them will hang on until the end and beat you.

“In a championship marathon, you’ve got three from each country; there’s no pacemakers.

” The Kenyans inevitably end up going out too hard or doing something wrong.

“I kind of know what sort of shape I’m in so the idea is to run the pace I think I’m capable of running and see where that ends up. Historically, if I run what I think I can run, you would do quite well.

“Marathon running has moved on the last three or four years so you don’t know what way it’s gonna’ go on the day. I’m confident that I’ll have a pretty good performance and as long as I can run what I think I can run, I’ll be happy.”