From a handful of enthusiasts to a sold-out calendar
Early Days
Marathon running existed in Ireland in small pockets for decades before it became a mass pursuit — club athletes, a handful of dedicated amateurs, the occasional attempt inspired by Olympic coverage. It was a minority sport, run by people who had usually come to it through track and cross-country rather than the other way round, and a marathon finisher in the 1960s or 1970s was rare enough to be a genuine local curiosity.
The Dublin Marathon and the 1980s Boom
That changed with the launch of the Dublin Marathon on 27 October 1980, timed to catch the same wave of enthusiasm sweeping the United States and, to a lesser extent, Britain. The route itself was drawn up by Bertie Messitt, a CIE bus conductor and club official who knew the city's roads better than most engineers; 2,100 people entered that first year and 1,420 crossed the line, with local runner Dick Hooper first home for a prize of a piece of Dublin Crystal — he went on to win it three times, still the only person to do so. Ireland already had a golden generation of distance athletes to point to — Eamonn Coghlan, John Treacy, and shortly afterwards Sonia O'Sullivan — and their success on the world stage gave ordinary club runners a reason to believe the distance was within reach. Dublin's field grew quickly through the 1980s, establishing the last Monday in October as a fixture on the national calendar that has never really lost its footing. The bank-holiday timing was itself part of the appeal — a Monday marathon meant the whole country, not just Dublin, could get to a start line and be home again by evening.
A Second Boom, Twenty-First Century Style
A second, larger boom arrived in the 2000s and accelerated through the 2010s and 2020s, driven by charity fundraising, social media, and a broader cultural shift that made "training for a marathon" a recognisable life project rather than an eccentric one. Dublin now sells out its field well in advance, and marathons in Cork, Belfast, Connemara, Waterford and a growing number of smaller towns have followed the same trajectory — routes that were once modest club affairs now drawing thousands, each with its own character and its own claim on the calendar. What used to be a once-in-a-lifetime achievement for most amateur runners has become, for a sizeable and growing group, an annual habit — a different Irish marathon each year, chosen as much for the scenery as for the course record.
From Running Ireland by F Cosgrove — a guide to the races of the island. Every race in the book is on our race map, county by county, with the month it usually falls in.