One Day on the Run at the Dublin City Marathon 2024
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.” – Ezra Pound
(Photo albums linked at bottom of post)
On the night of October 26th, I set the alarm on my phone and also stuck a battery in an old alarm clock and dialled it back an hour so as to be sure to be on time for the bus as the last few times the clocks went forward (or back) my phone didn’t automatically update the time and I ended up being an hour early or an hour late to various appointments. While technology is great, I think it’s healthy to have a slight distrust of it. Last year, when photographing the Dublin Marathon, I trusted the weather forecast on my phone and ended up trashing my lens, camera, and SD card, as the heavens opened up with Biblical amounts of rain. You can read about that here if you want to.
As it turned out, I woke up before either alarm and got on the 5.15am bus to Dublin. I’m not entirely sure why, but I kind of feel like a kid going to Disneyland. Actually, that’s a lie, I went to Disneyland last year and I was probably more excited about it than a lot of kids would be. It feels like the day will be a really great adventure. Oftentimes, in the past, when I have decided to enter or take photographs of races, I have felt like I really didn’t want to go when the day actually arrived, and oftentimes I didn’t. Knowing this, I made a Ulysses Pact with myself several weeks before the race. Legend has it that 3,000 years ago, Ulysses, who fought in the Trojan wars, was passing the island of the sirens and wanted to hear their song. However, he knew that any sailors that heard their singing were bewitched by it and consequently crashed their ships into the rocks and perished. Knowing that he would also be seduced into his ruin, he tied himself to the mast of the ship and ordered his crew, whose ears he had plugged up so as they would not hear the sirens, not to release him no matter what. A Ulysses Pact is thus creating a condition whereby one will be discouraged from not doing something because one fears their willpower may be lacking for some reason. And so, my Ulysses Pact with myself was to declare on my Facebook page that I would be taking pictures of the marathon and would give copies of individual photos (not collages) to people in return for making donations to one of two charities. Making this announcement, and taking the pictures for good causes, gave the day a sense of purpose that would be, to some degree, lacking otherwise. It’s the same way that entering a race puts one in a headspace that motivates one to train. Signing up for a race, for me anyway, is a Ulysses Pact with myself which focuses my brain so that I find myself in good enough shape to get through 26.2 miles. Being in good enough shape to go the distance is good, but sometimes I go all out and try to get in the best shape that is humanly possible for me personally, and that means being uber-conscious of what I eat so as to become whippet thin.
These days mobile phones make getting to Dublin by bus or train feel a bit like when Star Trek’s Captain Kirk would take his communicator out of his pocket and say “Beam me up, Scotty”. I often get on a bus or train, take out my phone, and get so engrossed in it that it’s a shock when I arrive at my destination; it almost feels as effortless as having beamed there instantly. Having boarded the bus, I put on an audiobook called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I’ve not heard two sentences and I’m off into dreamland and then suddenly, or at least it feels sudden, the driver announces that we have arrived in Dublin. Wow! That felt almost instant, I think.
And so, I arrive in Dublin at Batchelor’s Walk and when getting off of the bus I tell a chap that has Dublin Marathon paraphernalia to smile at mile 25. He looks at me a bit confused and so I explain, “I’ll be taking pictures”, to which he replies, “Oh, I know you” and I feel a little bit bashful. I’ve said this many a time, but it still surprises me when some complete stranger knows who I am based on things I post online in the privacy of my own bedroom.
I buy a sandwich and a double Snickers bar in one of the shops and the lady asks me how I am and I reply with “not too bad but at least it’s not raining anyway”. No matter what happens to you in life, if you’re Irish, there is always consolation to be found on any day where it does not rain. I make my way to the James Joyce bridge and talk to some of the “official” photographers for a bit. Shortly before the first runners arrive, I take a test shot with my camera so as to make sure all of my settings are dialled in properly. I point it at two random cyclists coming over the bridge and then preview the image. I’m about to delete it and then all of a sudden, I look up and the two cyclists are right in front of me and I momentarily get a bit of a shock as I think they are about to give out to me for taking their photo. And then I realise they are two chaps from my running club; it’s a small world.
Before long, the first wheelchair athlete comes over the bridge, shortly followed by the runners and I start shooting away. I only stay here for about fifteen minutes as I have around an hour’s walk to get to my main location of the day at mile 25.
At mile 25, I get talking to one of the stewards about the barriers that are up which weren’t there in previous years. She explained that they put them up because spectators were crowding the street in previous years and it was a health and safety issue, which made sense, and aside from being a health and safety issue, it was a nightmare trying to take pictures as pedestrians kept getting in the way.
“Are you taking pictures?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“What is your name?” she asks.
“Richard,” I say.
“Is it Richard Python?” she asks.
“Yes,” I reply, without correcting her pronunciation, as I kind of liked the sound of it.
I wish her a good day, and move on down the road a bit, trying to find a good spot. I think I have one but then think I better go to the loo before the first runners come as there won’t be any opportunity to move for a solid 6 hours. I approach the stewards and ask some advice on this and one of them informs me that she needs to go to the loo too and will go there with me. We exchange names and have a brief chat and she says, “What a way to meet someone!” and some part of my brain thinks that it would be a funny start to some kind of romantic comedy where the two lovers first meet when going to the toilet together. If that’s not a solid foundation to build a beautiful romance on then I don’t know what is; in an entirely fictitious sense of course. There’s only one toilet and so I say, “Ladies first” but she insists that I go first and sure who am I to argue in this current age of equality. Whether going to the loo first, or going out with a woman that wants to buy me dinner – I am happy to accept a woman’s etiquette without feeling emasculated. So, if any woman wants to bring me out for dinner and pay for everything, then do be sure to get in touch. I scrub up quite well so I’d be worth every penny. But I digress.
In position and waiting, it isn’t long before the first runners come through. This year, I am on a mission. I have a better camera and have a mission to shoot as many of the first 100 or so men and women as I can. Last year, I had a vague idea that I wanted to make some kind of collage with the top runners. It proved to be well received by those that were in it and so this year I decided to use a higher resolution camera and shoot the first runners in as high a resolution as possible. At races, I often miss the first runner as my camera for some reason glitches or there are people in the way of them, and so the odds of getting the first 20 runners are a little iffy, with the possibility of getting the top 20 women even slimmer as a lot of them are smushed up with the men. I had people openly give out to me last year for not making a collage of the top 20 women, as if it was some kind of misogynistic act on my part, and I felt like replying that we have equality now and there is no reason why the top 20 overall couldn’t be comprised of an equal number of males and females, but I suspect that may have led to even more attacks. Having said that, I think a lot of such attacks come from trolls with nothing better to do than go online and try to annoy people.
I feel like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible with the mission to capture both the top 20 overall AND the top 20 women. To fail on the latter could lead to controversy and declarations of misogyny and ultimately wind up with my being cancelled and deleted from the internet forever. Of course, I’m being a bit daft; people aren’t that ridiculous, although they might be; you wouldn’t know these days.
I have the camera set to release at a high frame rate so as I have plenty of images to choose from when making my collages. I feel a sense of excitement with every milestone I hit. I capture the top 10! Awesome, I’ll be able to make a top 10 collage. I capture the top 20! Awesome! The top 20 collage is happening this year! And then more and more bodies come charging down the road and I’m pointing, focussing, and shooting like a one-man-army with a sniper rifle trying to neutralise enemy targets as they are coming towards him incessantly. After a time, I have taken several hundred pictures and feel a sense of satisfaction that I have not only captured the top 20 overall, but also the top 20 women. Mission success! No one will be able to declare me a woman hater! Whoop.
My next objectives for the day are to shoot about as many people as I can before the space on my memory card runs out. I was going to spend 200 euros on a bigger card so as to have enough space to shoot everyone in high resolution, but instead of that, I turn the resolution down a little bit, to save space, to a point which is still quite a bit bigger than “official” pictures tend to be. Nobody appreciates, or even notices high resolution anyway. It’s only really something to think about if you want to print quite large, which I suspect almost nobody does.
There are loads of things happening today. Collette O’Hagan, aged 74, is running her 1000th marathon in Dublin, and Colin Farrrell is running with his friend Emma Fogarty, who was born with a rare skin condition, in order to raise funds for a charity which supports people with same. There are loads of people I know running and so I’m keeping a special eye out for them, and there’s loads of individual stories I know about various runners and the reasons they are running. I know people with incurable cancers, people who have children with incurable illnesses, people who are aiming to achieve personal goals, raise money for charity, people who are going for personal best times, people who are competing, and many who are just taking part for the sheer fun of getting out and sucking air, and I want to catch as many moments as I am physically able to catch. I’m as motivated and determined today as any participating athlete, be they aiming for a podium, a personal best time, or just hoping to get over the finish line. All the agony and ecstasy of life is out there on the road. It’s not just people running down the road for nothing, it’s individuals struggling through life and trying to be their best selves.
After a while, I go sort of blind and completely lose myself in the moment. My hands and shoulders start to ache after an hour or two and so I decide it’s time to use my monopod and after a while longer I start to get sharp pains in my hands. Unusual, I think, but it’s not until the following day when I transfer the pictures to my computer that I realise that I took 12,000 photos which is significantly more than I had ever previously taken at a race.
A well-known runner called Ger Copeland is running today. After a skiing accident last February, he went on to have three brain bleeds and a stroke, and had to relearn how to walk, talk, and eat. When I heard he was running the marathon this year, I thought it sounded like a crazy idea and that he wouldn’t be anywhere close to his usual sub 3 hours in the race. As it turned out, he ran 3:06 which is about as good as I’ve managed to do on a good day. He ran with assistance as he has no feeling down one side of his body. It doesn’t seem like it should be possible to run like this, never mind to run a marathon in such a fast time, but yet he does and I, for one, am quite inspired. He has run exceptionally well in the past, but today’s run is surely the most impressive achievement in his running career.
Shooting away for a couple of hours, a girl comes running along and excitedly declares “Colin Farrell is coming” and so I snap out of my trance a bit so as to be ready to capture him. He comes along pushing Emma Fogarty but it’s too difficult to get a shot as they have people running around them for security. It was still great to see them though. People with Emma’s skin condition usually don’t live past 35 and the Dublin Marathon marks her 40th birthday which is a testament to the power of positivity.
I decided at the start of the day that I would not leave until Collette O’Hagan had gone through. The space on my memory card is getting low though, and so I turn the picture size settings down all the way to give me more leeway, and shortly thereafter, she comes running up the road with her entourage and a big beaming smile. It’s quite a milestone. Knowing it’s a momentous occasion for her and also knowing the struggles of a lot of runners out on the road today makes me dismiss the pains in my hands as no big deal, while on another day I might have called it a day when my hands became as sore as they did. Nearly three weeks later, they still don’t feel quite right, but such a massive effort is a one off.
After Collette is gone through, I take a few more pictures, but the space on my camera says I only have room enough for a few hundred more pictures and it starts to rain a bit and so I call it a day.
I pack my camera away and my entire arms from my hands to my shoulders ache, my neck aches, my back aches, and my knees feel as stiff as and inflexible as planks of wood. But I feel quite content. Having looked at people exclusively through a viewfinder for hours, it feels weird to be looking at them through my eyes as I make my way through the streets of Dublin. My brain is in photography mode and I’m imagining people walking down the street as if I need to frame and shoot them. Like a lot of people, when I was a teenager particularly, I used to have this paralysing feeling that everyone was looking at me when I was walking down the road. But since I started taking photos, I’ve started looking closely at other people and realised most people are completely lost in their own worlds and totally oblivious to everyone else. One of the cool things about photography is that it takes you outside of your own head and makes you look, really look, at other people.
A lot of people go to O’Donoghue’s pub for a pint after the marathon and I accidentally happen to be passing it and so decide to go in and use the loo. There’s a bit of a celebration going on with two runners, James and Yvonne Sheehan, receiving amedal to mark their 100th marathon. From sitting still for hours, taking pictures, I have a chill that feels like it’s seeped into my bones and so I decide to stay and have a pint of blackcurrant MiWadi with ice and it tastes absolutely delicious. I got offered a drink by several people but the idea of drinking something with alcohol in it seems as foreign to me now as it did when I was 10 years old. After some chats, and feeling myself reheated, I head back out onto the now damp streets. I ask a random girl outside, “Oh, is it raining?” and she confirms that it is indeed, and I make my way towards Heuston Station as night slowly descends.
:)
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