Longford 24/08/08

After the excitement  and adventure of the Swiss Alpine marathon, the humble Longford Marathon was just what we needed to bring us back down to earth. While most people have never heard of the Longford Marathon it has been on the calendar for a number of years now and is very popular with the serious running fraternity in Ireland.  The most serious of them all was to be found in the sports hall at St Mel’s where we went to register on Sunday morning. Tony Mangan was attempting to break the world record for 48 hours running on a treadmill. By the time we arrived he had been on the go for well over 47 hours and had already broken the record. When the stopwatch hit 48 hours he had smashed the world record and had clocked up an incredible 405.2kms (252 miles). After witnessing Tony’s amazing feat we left the hall, suitably humbled, to prepare for our measly 26 miles.

There were about 300 participants lining up at the start of the race and it seemed that everywhere we looked there were faces that we recognised from previous races in the Burren and Connemara. We ran for a while in a group with some guys who had already run the marathon route on the Friday as a kind of practice run. (These are the kind of people you meet all the time at these races – amazing guys but seriously mad).

After a downpour of biblical proportions in the first mile the sky cleared and it turned out to be a perfect day for running. At the 7 mile mark we went off the main road and started down the back roads and lanes. The route actually took us through three counties including Leitrim, Roscommon and of course Longford itself. Alan left me after about 9 miles at which stage we were both going fairly well. At around mile 18 I met a guy who was wearing a t-shirt from the Swiss Alpine marathon. Small world.  I asked him how he had got on there and he said it had nearly killed him. I knew the feeling.

22 miles in I caught up with Alan who had been having a few problems. At this stage I was heading for a personal best and wanted to keep pushing on. The last four miles were torture though and I couldn’t keep the pace up. We both finished together in a time of 3 hrs 57 minutes which was my best time of the year.

All in all Longford was perfect for what we needed – a no-frills, close-to-home race that didn’t involve any travelling or expense. We had originally planned to do Helsinki but for the reasons above Longford turned out to be a far better option. The only pity was that it wasn’t better publicised in the town itself. Most people didn’t seem to know what was going on and more than once people walked in front of us or across us as we came up the finishing straight. Other than that it was a well organised race on a nice route and well done to all involved.

Longford Race Info

Marathon Type:  Country roads.

Temperature: 12-15 degrees

Conditions: Overcast

No. of  Participants: 300

Entry Fee:  45 euro