“Men, today we die a little.”
So spoke Emil Zatopek at the start of the 1956 Olympic marathon, and he knew what he was talking about. The indefatigable Czech runner, also known as the Human Locomotive, had won the gold medal four years previous, only this time, after hitting the marathon’s infamous wall, he ended up sixth — finishing in a death-like state of exhaustion.
Later, after his retirement, Zatopek often philosophised on the classic distance in words which still ring true today: “If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.”
What does that even mean? In 1952, having already won a 5,000m-10,000m double, a first in Olympic history, Zatopek decided to attempt the unthinkable treble by also competing in the marathon. Like many before or since perhaps his greatest asset at that point was he’d yet to run 26.2 miles, his mind, body and spirit unaware of what lies ahead. Which is also why for many, including myself, the first marathon is often your best.
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Con Houlihan always described the marathon as the equivalent of conquering a horizontal Everest
In the end, he won by more than a minute, admittedly making up his race tactics as he went along, clocking a then Olympic record of 2:23.03: “I was unable to walk for a whole week after that, so much did the race take out of me. But it was the most pleasant exhaustion I have ever known.”
Of course, women die a little too. Despite the best efforts of Kathrine Switzer to show the way at the 1967 Boston Marathon, women were forbidden from running the Olympic marathon until 1984, when Joan Benoit pulled clear after only 14 minutes and defied the sweltering Los Angeles heat to win by almost a minute-and-a-half.
Still, there were some shows of the sheer exhaustion Zatopek talked about. Gabriele Anderson-Scheiss, a ski instructor representing Switzerland, entered the LA Coliseum already out on her feet, staggering around the final lap for five minutes and 44 seconds before collapsing over the finish line.
Con Houlihan always described the marathon as the equivalent of conquering a horizontal Everest, which is a good way of putting it. Because as any proper mountaineer will tell you, no summit is successful without a successful descent. Getting to the top is optional, getting down is mandatory, and if hitting 21 miles in the marathon feels somewhere near the summit it’s still an awful long way down.
Nowhere in the now 41-year history of winning the Dublin marathon was that more evident than in the 1982 race, when Houlihan’s fellow Kerryman Jerry Kiernan set out to discover what the fuss was all about. Already renowned for his fearless front-running — a sub-four minute miler too incidentally – and like Zatopek in 1952 Kiernan had yet to run into the great unknown.
Then aged 29, Kiernan had watched the first two editions of the Dublin marathon and thought why not? Dick Hooper won the first race in 1980, then Neil Cusack in 1981, and Kiernan would regularly beat those on the roads, breaking 46:30 for 10 miles three times during that summer of 1982, and that’s certainly not hanging around.
Hooper and Cusack however had run several marathons before Dublin, Hooper’s experience including the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, which he ran with his brother Pat, Cusack winning the Boston Marathon in 1974. They knew intimately what the road had in store.
Kiernan simply tore into it, and by the 15-mile marker was running close to the world record, the 2:08.18 Rob de Castella clocked in Fukuoka the year before. Kiernan wasn’t alone though, his Clonliffe Harriers club-mate David Taylor acting as a sort of unofficial pacemaker alongside him, running without a race number, before promptly dropping out.
Slowly and then suddenly everything changed: running through the Tour de France like crowds on Station Road in Raheny, Kiernan had a lead of almost four minutes, at which point the legs started to wobble. He stopped to stretch out the cramp once and then again, and by time he approached the finish around Merrion Square already looked to have had enough, stopping for a third time.
It will always be hard to explain the marathon to anyone who has never run one
Legally or otherwise, Eamonn Coghlan then jumped from the timing truck and began shouting encouragement in his ear as he ran alongside, the finish now within sight, which Kiernan reached in 2:13.47, the ghost of Zatopek howling in the bones of his face.
“I admit I have a new respect for it now,” Kiernan said, his time a Dublin course record which stood until 2004, though his once unassailable lead reduced to just over a minute. Kiernan would win Dublin again in 1992, the lesson of that first race perhaps applied most memorably at the 1984 Olympic marathon, where he moved more sensibly through the miles to finish ninth in a lifetime best of 2:12.20.
It will always be hard to explain the marathon to anyone who has never run one. It’s also why when Noel Carroll helped start up the first Dublin marathon, in 1980, he had to run it too, so his marathon philosophy always came from experience.
“It’s not the distance that kills, it’s the pace,” he said, which no one can defy, not that Carroll was ever shy about sharing his philosophy: “I used to be an eccentric; now I’m an expert. I was once tolerated; now I’m consulted. I have graduated from somebody who should know better to somebody who knows better.”
Carroll’s words are still as relevant today, 24 years on from his sudden death, after one of his regular noon training runs around UCD, in October 1998.
Kiernan won’t be around on Sunday, his death in January 2021 leaving another great void in the day. Perhaps his experience, and that of others like Zatopek, leaves us a philosophy worth following: run every marathon like it was your first, or indeed your last.
