Cork Marathon 2022 | We’re Back

This isn’t looking good. My Wife and I are in our apartment in Rathmines Dublin the Thursday before the return of the Cork Marathon looking at the weather app. We can’t believe it the Cork Marathon may get washed out. I went immediately for funny here. I knew the weather would get people down. After two years a run around our beautiful Cork City might be lessened by the weather. I was going to do my part to make sure that didn’t happen. If it was going to rain we were going smile and run anyway.

Before we go any further I mentioned ‘Wife’, ‘our apartment’ and ‘Dublin so it’s time for a quick update. Julie and I married on April 22nd 2022 having both changed jobs and moved to Dublin at the same time or all our change at once whilst on fire.

And now back to the Cork Marathon, I was nervous about this one more than any other marathon I have been apart of. Cork is our hometown marathon and coming back after a two year hiatus was nerve wracking we wanted it to go well. So first we laughed at the prospect of rain.

The Cork Marathon came back with a bang on Sunday June 5th 2022. The organisers spent their two years in exile well. I couldn’t have had a better experience as a pacer. We knew what was going on early and information was clear from the outset. A lot of us volunteered because we wanted our Marathon back. There was a strong willingness to make this work out. The Cork Marathon has had it’s problems over the years. I was there in 2016 when the half marathon went the wrong way and came head on with the Full Marathon. I always felt we never quite figured out the Expo at registeration. It seemed to keep reducing in size and relevance. To top it off one year the half marathon shirt was a salmon pink and grey color how was I supposed to train in that? Despite this what we always had was atmosphere, the buzz on race day was always infectious and when you hit Patrick Street in the final 400 meters you knew the whole city would roar you home. In 2022 the Cork Marathon morphed into a well oiled machine.

I felt they got these things right and should retain them;

  1. Advertising even people in my office in Dublin knew the Cork Marathon was on

  2. Two waves in the half marathon is a sign of growth and should be further developed if needed

  3. The registeration and Expo looked slick. We had speakers people wanted to hear and if like me you wanted to be registered and pick up your number in 5 mins no problem

  4. Atmosphere the buzz was still there and it was better

The Race

I was pacing for the 2:20 half marathon crew with Ed Dunphy. Previous experience pacing between 2 - 2:30 has thought me a few things

  1. These guys are usually completing a bucket list goal. It’s likely to be their only time ever in their life running this distance. It means a lot to finish and I feel repsonsible for that.

  2. Encouragement is golden. With many inexperienced runners around you they can slip into a state of disbelief quite easily. Even something as simple as ‘Well done another mile in the bag and perfectly paced’ keeps them going.

  3. I always try to keep the pace level throughout and I timed our race to reach the finish line at last second in this case 2:19:59.

  4. You’re the tour guide, tell them about the course. I always talk to people about Glasheen up to Farranlea Road because the route twists, turns and undulates for a while and you’re over half way here it can feel like your losing your rhythm. A lot of people think it’s fatigue and today is not their day. This is often not the case and I reassure people that this ground can be made up on the straight road.

We had 10-20 people with us the whole way and at North Main street we told them cut loose if you have it in you and you’ll be under 2:20. Most of our crew left us and we picked up a few people grinding out the last few hundred meters and gave them plenty of encouragement. This encouragement included me reminding people that in half an hour we’d all be drinking coffee or pints proud as hell that we finished another half marathon. This really got people pumping their arms.

cork half marathon

Cork City Half Marathon Route 2022

Pacing Summary

I always look back on pacing and try to refine myself for next time. In this we were a bit quick for the first few miles. This was probably excitement. In the second half we had to contend long inclines and this slowed us a little bit.

We all made it to the Old Oak afterwards for a pint.

Andrew Burns