Before 2024, Rory Barrett had never run more than three kilometres in his life. This October he'll line up for his second Dublin Marathon, chasing sub-four, and raising money for the Keith Duffy Foundation while he does it.
Rory is a recent graduate of Dublin City University, where he studied economics, politics and law. He's from Dublin, went to primary school in Lucan, and still lives in the city. Right now he's sitting his FE-1s, the entrance exams for the Law Society, and looking for a route into a training contract. The final paper lands exactly three weeks before the marathon.
"There's an academic and a physical juggle going on at the moment," he says. He's not complaining about either.
You can support Rory's fundraising for the Keith Duffy Foundation ahead of the Dublin Marathon [LINK].
The law came first
The interest in law started early, and it didn't come from home. Rory's family is full of teachers. But his Transition Year work experience put him into a law firm, and that was that.
"I just loved the culture of it," he says. "I loved the drive for perfection that everyone seemed to have. The ambitions that everyone had." The firm had nineteen different departments, and the sheer spread of it appealed to him. Lots of paths, lots of directions, plenty of room to move.
Over the summer he did an internship in real estate law, an area he had no experience in beyond the university modules. He loved it. "Every bit of work that you did, you could see resolve into real life very quickly. Everything I saw was affecting real people in real time." He's also spent time in construction law, and he fancies a go at corporate at some stage. For now the focus is simply on qualifying as a solicitor.
He's happy to be an open book about the rest.
Five kilometres, then ten, then a half
The running started almost by accident. A friend signed up for a marathon in 2025, and Rory tagged along on a few runs with no intention of entering anything.
Then he ran his first 5k. "Oh my god, that's amazing. I've run five kilometres. Imagine I can do ten." So he worked his way up to ten. Then he set himself a target of the Battersea half marathon in London at the end of 2024, and the ball just kept rolling from there.
Dublin 2025 was his first marathon, and by his own account he went at it the wrong way round. One long run, a pile of 5ks and 10ks, and not much else. "I did not do what was required at all. I was very uninformed. I just kind of did it."
He finished, and he was delighted to finish, but he paid for it. He'd never been beyond 30 kilometres in his life before race day, and there are 42.2 of them. "When I got to 31, I had no idea what my body would do. I was kind of just crawling over the finish line."
Why the Keith Duffy Foundation
Rory's parents went along to one of the Foundation's fundraising events a few months back, and that's how he came across Ashley Carroll, who was pulling the running team together. But the reason he said yes goes back further than that.
At sixteen, in his first ever job, Rory worked at Jump Zone in Liffey Valley, and he ran their sensory sessions. Thursday afternoons, thirty or forty children on the trampolines, every one of them with somebody minding them, and a very different atmosphere to the birthday-party chaos of a Saturday.
"You're wanting to give them happiness that they probably never experienced before," he says. "Everyone was having a good time, and you're with other people in the same position as you. I loved doing it."
That job landed at an age when he was, in his own words, very impressionable, and it stuck. So when it came to picking an organisation to run for, there was no debate. The part of the Foundation's work he keeps coming back to is what they do in education, alongside individuals, families and schools.
"Learning is always going to be different for them. There are different attention spans and different needs. If this is underfunded, they're going to be at a disadvantage no matter what." As a graduate himself, he's clear on what education is worth. "Everyone has the right to learn."
This time, the work is going in
The 2026 build-up looks nothing like the last one. Rory started training in July while he was in the States for the summer, running loops of Central Park and out along the Hudson. He reckons he's already done more running in this block than he did for the whole of last year's.
He's climbing his mileage in roughly 12% increments. Fifty kilometres one week, fifty-six the next. The plan is to peak at a 75k week about a fortnight out, then bring it back down. His longest run so far is a 28k on Sunday 23 August, and he wants to get a 36k in the bank before race day, purely so his legs know what's coming.
He'd taken 24k the day before we spoke, and his legs were in bits. He was fairly relaxed about that.
Gels come out for anything over 15 kilometres and nothing shorter. He's eating far more than he used to, because you have to. New shoes, a proper plan, and a target: 3:59:59.
"It's hard to do, especially if you're not an elite runner. But it's achievable if you put the work in." Much like the FE-1s, then.
He runs without headphones, and always has. It started as a safety thing when he was living in Hoxton in London and everyone was telling him to keep his wits about him. Now it's just how he runs. Long runs, on his own, singing away to himself.
The running has become the release valve for everything else. "Around exam season you spend ten hours a day in the library, you go home at eight, you don't want to go back into your books. You go for a run for forty minutes and you feel like a new person." He describes it as hitting a refresh button. His Garmin now tells him his VO2 max is 53. He'd love to know what it was in 2023.
The bit nobody warns you about
Ask him about the hardest part of Dublin last year and he doesn't say the hills. He says the quiet.
"Past the big roundabout, there's a long stretch where there's less support. Around Terenure, a little before Rathgar. There's no one there. It's very much me versus my brain."
What got him through was the thing every first-timer remembers. His name on his bib, and complete strangers roaring it at him. "Go on Rory, go on. This person doesn't even know who I am, but they want me to keep going."
Bach, Bruce and everything in between
Away from the road, Rory is a Grade 8 pianist with the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and his listening is as broad as his degree. Classical goes on for study, which is how Johann Sebastian Bach ended up as his most-played artist of 2025, six hours at a time in the corner of a library.
Beyond that it's Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, Tyler, the Creator, Billy Joel, Elton John. Bruce Springsteen is the all-timer. Rory has seen him live twice. His mother has seen him 58 times.
He's a firm believer in the album as a whole thing. "The artist put this in this order for a reason. I want to listen to it for that reason."
"Rory did this for a charity, you can too"
Asked what he'd want a reader to take away, he doesn't talk about the time or the training.
"If I wasn't doing it for a charity, I don't think I'd be doing it at all. In theory I could go and run a marathon myself right now. But if I do this one, I'm helping an external organisation do a good job. If that's not a motivator in itself, I don't know what is."
His parents have a line he keeps coming back to. A job worth doing is a job worth doing well. He's applying it to the exams, and he's applying it to the twenty-six miles.
You can support Rory's fundraising for the Keith Duffy Foundation ahead of the Dublin Marathon [LINK].
