It wouldn't be the Dublin City Marathon without men in dresses, green wigs and an athlete dressed in a papier mâché Guinness glass.
A giant yellow and purple bear cycled past the crowds, waving, as a woman in a headscarf stood near the finish line, waving an anti-abortion placard at the weary athletes.
More than 8,000 people ran, jogged or walked yesterday's race which was dominated by the Kenyans.
Ruth Kutol decisively broke the women's record, coming in more than five and a half minutes faster than the current record holder. Fellow Kenyan Onesmus Kilonzo won the men's race, coming home in two hours, 17 minutes and four seconds. Gary Crossan was the fastest Irish man, coming sixth.
Yesterday's race was the third marathon in the third country in three days for three men.
Colin Munro and Hugh Hunter from Glasgow ran the race in kilts while Martin Linek from Karlsruhe in Germany wore more traditional running gear.
They ran the Basel marathon on Saturday and the Frankfurt marathon on Sunday before arriving in Dublin. "We had very nice weather and so many pretty, lovely girls running around today," noted Martin Linek. "There were more pretty girls here than in Frankfurt," he added.
The three men had organised friends to supply them with a pint of Guinness when they reached 42 kilometres. "That is the only way to get a Scottish guy running 120 kilometres in three days," said Mr Linek. "Just tell him that the Guinness is free and then he runs."
They found the Basel marathon to be the most difficult as it was extremely cold. "There were more dogs and ducks than spectators," said Mr Linek.
Meabh Hickey proved that anyone could run the marathon when she took on the challenge in February. She had just had a new baby and already had two children under two and a half. She was four stone overweight and could only run for three minutes before getting out of breath. She saw a notice in the Irish Runner looking for volunteers for the marathon and called up, thinking she could hand out water to the athletes. Before long, she had been enrolled in a specially chosen team of 17, selected to show that anyone could do the marathon. They were trained by Brendan O'Shea, who coached marathon record-holder Jerry Kiernan.
Yesterday, Meabh finished the course in just over four hours. Would she do it again? "I'll tell you tomorrow, or maybe the next day. But it was fantastic."
