Marathon Tasks: Emmet Malonetalks to the man charged with organising Monday's marathon in Dublin.

For most of us, the preparations for Monday's race have consisted of endless circuits of a block, neighbourhood or home town. For race director Jim Aughney, it's a year-round cycle of meetings, deadlines and warm-up events that must make the marathon itself feel a little like a sprint.

Aughney, a veteran of the Business Houses Athletic Association, became involved in 1988 when, in the way of these things, the man who had the job then, Alex Sweeney, sort of volunteered him for something.

"My first job," he recalls, "was to do with timing, then I became course director and, finally, I took on my current role about 10 years ago."

For a man holding down a full-time job at Eircom, it's a fair commitment, but there are a half-a-dozen committee members who share the burden over the year and about 700 volunteers who help out in the days leading up to the race or on race day itself.

"People probably don't realise how much work is involved," says Aughney, "but there's an awful lot to be done and we've been very lucky over the years to benefit from a huge amount of goodwill, whether it's from members of clubs, the public or the big organisations, whose co-operation is absolutely necessary for us to organise the race each year."

It's those in the latter category that take up most of his time in the weeks leading up to the event. Aughney tries to cram meetings with Dublin Corporation, Dublin Bus, the Luas and the Garda, among others, into single days so as not to have to take too much time off work, while most of the less-formal stuff gets done in the evenings.

"In the few weeks leading up to the race a lot more people come on board," he says. "Josephine Healy is the volunteer co-ordinator and she oversees that whole end of things. There are meetings with the people who will be the head stewards on the day and they in turn deal with the volunteers who come in at the last moment.

"The bulk of the work really remains unchanged from year to year. We have people to run the Expo (on this weekend at the RDS), the baggage area before the start, the start itself, to marshal the route (under the direction of about 250 gardaí), run the water stations, oversee the finish and run things like medal presentation, which we try to put a bit of effort into.

"We get help from several outside organisations too, most obviously more than a hundred members of the St John's Ambulance Brigade, but also the chartered physiotherapists who provide their services free to those finishing the race. It's basically a huge collaborative effort."

This year, there has been a little extra work to do because of changes to the course. Even the slightest alteration means the whole 26.2 miles must be measured and then independently remeasured to ensure the validity of the timings achieved. That means an early start some weekend morning with a Garda escort to allow access to the roads rather than just the pavements.

Some of the changes are practically forced on the organisers because they abandoned a route that involved the race going down O'Connell Street and over the river at the end.

"That was probably a better course for the runners all right," Aughney recalls, "but you have to be reasonable about these things and the fact is that what we were doing was cutting through the heart of the city for hours and hours and hours.

"What happened was that we all sat down afterwards and talked about it and I think we accepted that it had to be changed."

The alterations made this year, however, involve a move to a new, larger start area and are the result of the steady growth in entries, as well as an attempt to plan for even larger races over the coming years.

"Back in 1994 we had 2,497 entries, this year we'll have over 11,000. Obviously, the logistics involved in organising the race now require more work, but at the same time you find that people are willing to do that much more when they see that the event is successful and still growing.

"The gardaí, for instance, have been terrific to us. They can't do enough because they see the race as a major international event for the city. The corporation is hugely supportive too."

The biggest marathons are worth huge sums to the cities in which they are run, more than €100 million to New York, for instance. And, while Dublin is clearly not the biggest, the revenues are not insignificant. In 2003 a study conducted by the Smurfit Business School estimated the event was worth about €8 million to the city, mostly in tourism-related revenues. The budget, at about €750,000, is slightly less than one-tenth as much, and the main expenses are the €150,000 or so in prize money for the elite athletes and €120,000 for promotions.

Perhaps the greatest cost to Aughney personally is that, having become involved in the first place because of his love of distance running, he doesn't actually get to run any marathons himself anymore.

"The last one I did now was in 2000 and it's something I'd really like to get back to all right," he says. "I thought about running New York (tomorrow week) but it just didn't work out. Who knows? Maybe next year."