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[QUOTE="Dara OKearney, post: 5114807, member: 390655"]
Thank you for your kind comments and interesting question.

I took up marathon running purely as a recreational thing to get in shape, running the Dublin marathon once a year. Apart from that I only ran the Connemarathon, and Tresco (which I won once). My funniest story is from the one I won, but doesn't involve me.

The most famous participant in the race was a disgraced former 400m runner who had been at the Olympics. His career had ended with a drugs ban, and this particular year he was the subject of a feelgood TV documentary where he was going to transform himself into an elite marathoner by training, eating and living like one, and then winning this race (the softest marathon in the UK). This was rather naive since the body type needed to be a top class 400m runner is very different from that of a marathoner. He looked the part, and he charge off at the start, but quickly ran out of steam.

Tresco is a tiny island off the coast of Cornwall, so the marathon consisted of "figure of 8" loops around the island. Each lop was just over 3 miles so the race was just over 8 loops of the island. After his initial sprint, he found it a long hard grind to make it to the finish, getting passed by grannies on the way. As he lapped him for the second time, a runner I was friendly with gave him an ironic thumbs up and "encouraging" words:

"Just think of it as a series of 400m races, mates. 104 of them"
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