Liz Gilmartin's father Roland spent years telling his three daughters Sarah, Alison and Liz exactly what it would take to get him to stand down as manager of the women's section at their athletics club in Hastings.
"He would say, I'm going to retire as soon as one of you girls can beat my county record."
"And it was a long time before it happened."
He did not actually retire until last year, by which point he had been the club's president and one of its officials for decades.
On the last Sunday in October, his youngest daughter runs the Dublin Marathon for Team Hope.
From Hastings to Swords
Liz is from the south coast of England and has lived in Ireland for the last twenty-six years. Her husband Keith is Irish, she works as a Montessori teacher, and the family are in Swords in north County Dublin.
She has a straightforward way of comparing home to home.
"Hastings is like a little seaside town with not a lot in it. It's probably smaller than Swords."
Asked for her hobbies, she puts them in an order that will surprise nobody who has met a GAA parent.
"Firstly would be probably GAA at the minute. I play on the adult B team with St Finian's Swords, and then running as my second hobby."
A Family on the Track
Running was not something Liz took up. It was the household she grew up in.
"Growing up, running would have been our family. My dad was the athletics coach and managed the women's section. So from probably nine years old, we were out on the athletics track."
All three sisters were in the club. Competition was the medium the family spoke in.
"We were a very competitive family. I have two older sisters, and we were all in the running club. So there's always a lot of competition to do better times than the next person, and we was always competing to beat dad's times in any of the events."
Her father kept going long after his daughters had grown up, competing into the veteran age groups and travelling to Australia for a veterans' championship. As he got older he moved away from distance and into the field events, the long jump and the triple jump.
"He did it to a high standard."
Liz competed from about ten, as soon as she was allowed to compete properly, mostly on the track.
Then she left home, and the club went with it.
When she first came to Ireland she found a club in Swords attached to Fingallians and ran with them for a while. Then the children arrived and that put the running on hold.
"Obviously, family gets in the way, so I didn't have as much time to commit to it. It was more catching a run when I could."
"So since then, I've just been solo running. I don't belong to any running club anymore. I just get out and do it when I can."
Why She Runs Alone Now
Liz has made her peace with solo running, and her first reason for it is the most honest one anybody has given in this series.
"I kind of enjoy solo running mainly because I can't run and talk at the same time."
The rest of it is about control.
"It stops that, and I can just go at my own pace. If I'm having a good day, I might pick up the pace. If I'm having a bad day I can go slow. So I'm kind of just in control of it."
"I haven't got a thing where I've got to match somebody else's pace."
She is also well placed for it, and she knows it.
"I'm very close to Malahide Castle where I am. So I can run out of my front door, and I can go to the castle, do a couple of laps, and run back."
"I have all my different kilometre markings to fit in my training schedule."
When she wants distance instead of laps, the coast road does the job. One morning she set off along it and simply did not turn around until she got to Baldoyle.
"On one of my runs, I just kept going."
"I'm quite lucky with the area."
Shoeboxes, Since She Was Small
Liz's connection to Team Hope goes back to her own childhood in England.
"I've always helped and volunteered and made shoeboxes for Team Hope ever since I was small, even back in England. It would have been something as children, we would have been encouraged to do."
She has carried it into her own house, and her reason for it is about her children as much as about the children at the other end.
"I've really enjoyed doing it with my own children, putting a shoebox together, and just having them aware that not everyone is as fortunate as they are."
"They might walk down to many different presents under the Christmas tree, whereas we're putting together just one little shoebox for somebody not as fortunate as them."
And then the line that explains why she keeps doing it.
"For some of these kids, this is all they get just once a year. So it's just nice to know that you're making a difference for somebody's happiness."
Two friends of hers are involved, one volunteering and one working for the charity full-time, and Liz still goes in to the warehouse around Christmas to help pack the boxes for sending.
"It's nice to still be helping Nat out as well in something that she's very passionate about."
It was Nat who tipped her over the edge on the marathon.
"Nat said, oh, we have charity places if you fancy doing the marathon this year."
"Because up until that point, I was only half sort of thinking, oh, will I, won't I do it?"
2013, and What She Got Wrong
Liz has run Dublin once before, in 2013, and she is still annoyed about it.
"I did it in five and a half hours then. And at the time, I was very disappointed with that."
Thirteen years on, she has a fairly clear diagnosis of what went wrong.
"I think this time, I've learned where I maybe went wrong, my training and my nutrition and everything in the build-up. So I've worked harder on better training, better nutrition this time."
She has run a couple of half marathons in the build-up, partly as fitness checks and partly as laboratory sessions, and has been pleased with the times.
Her goal is the one every returning marathoner has.
"As long as I can do better than last time. So between five and five and a half would be good."
She is more dismissive of the bigger ambition than she probably should be.
"Obviously, I'd love under five hours, but I know realistically that won't happen. Under five would obviously be the ultimate goal, but I don't think it's going to happen."
On the evidence of a woman who has fixed her nutrition, fixed her training and run two halves she was happy with, that is worth revisiting on the day.
Six Gels and a Lot of Carbs
The fuelling is sorted, tested and counted.
"I've done a couple of the half marathons in the build-up with my training as well to test out what gels work for me."
She uses High5, the non-caffeine ones, and she has worked out her own requirement rather than guessing at it.
"I'm probably going to go out with six gels, and I know there's two stations in the marathon as well where they're giving out gels. So if I needed to grab another one or two, I can."
The carb loading she is less worried about.
"I love carbs anyway, so that was not a problem."
She has a set meal the night before and a set breakfast on the morning, both of which she has already practised.
"It'll be getting it all on board and hoping for the best."
The Hundredth Parkrun
Earlier this year Liz was closing in on her hundredth parkrun and going out every single week to get there.
"I just wanted to get there. I wanted to get there for the hundredth."
Then she took the summer off, because she is honest about what she can and cannot cope with.
"I just find with the heat, it's too much getting out, so I'm more of a winter runner."
What restarted the whole thing was a 10k at Malahide Castle in July.
"I was like, oh, if I can run this distance, maybe I can start doing a bit more distance running again."
The parkruns have been on hold through the training block, squeezed out by the long runs, and she fully intends to be back.
"I'm sure once the marathon's over, I'll be back out on a Saturday morning."
The Runs That Nearly Broke Her
Liz has come through the block without injury, which she is careful to knock wood about. What she has not come through without is doubt.
"I struggled on a couple of the long, long runs that I had to do. I got quite tired and exhausted, and the self-doubt kind of came in a bit. Like, what am I doing, type of thing."
What got her through is the thing people who train alone often do not have.
"I've got a good few running friends, Mel being my main virtual running buddy, and I checked in with her and said, oh, that was a really horrible run."
"And Mel's just been really good and supportive and said, oh, don't worry about it. Just keep going for the next one, and you'll get there."
Rhys and Izzy
There will be nobody from the family at the finish line, and the reason is entirely acceptable in that house.
Liz's fifteen-year-old daughter Izzy has a championship final the same day, against Ballinteer St John's. She plays football across two age groups at St Sylvester's, her own and the one above, and both of her teams won division one this season, so she has two cup finals that weekend and the chance of two championship medals to go with the leagues.
Liz's nineteen-year-old son Rhys is in the second year of an ESB apprenticeship and loving it. Soccer was his sport growing up, though he dropped out of the team this season because being away with the ESB meant he was never around. He is in the gym now and starting to do a bit of running.
"I haven't managed to get them into athletics yet."
Her husband Keith works in the civil service.
"He's very good on the sidelines and gives lots of supporting and always watches, but he leaves the sports to us."
Instead of family at the line, Liz will meet Mel from Portlaoise, who is running her first marathon on the same day, and the two of them will go for a coffee and a debrief.
The Finish Line
Liz has done this before, which means she knows exactly how the end of it will land.
"I know it's going to be huge, just with everything, even just stepping foot across that finish line knowing that I've done it and that I've raised a lot of money."
"It's just going to have been such a big achievement."
And she makes a point that anybody who has run a charity place will recognise, which is that the training is only half the work.
"It wasn't just all the training and getting there. I've been working on my fundraising page and kind of nagging all my friends and family to support me, both for the running and for the charity."
"So it's going to be an emotional finish."
"It Isn't Just for Athletes"
Liz's advice for anybody thinking about starting is parkrun, and not only the running half of it.
"Start with parkrun. Go and join the parkrun community and get involved with the volunteering with parkrun."
"You'll just meet so many other people that are runners of different levels and abilities, and doing it for many different reasons."
"And then build it from there, and see whether you want to keep going with just 5ks, or if you fancy a 10k, or if you fancy going for anything bigger."
The volunteering is the part she keeps coming back to, and she has a live example of why.
Mel, the friend from Portlaoise running her first marathon this year, got the idea from marshalling at a previous one.
"She said that she was looking at all different people from all different walks of life and different abilities. And she was like, I can do that as well."
Which is the whole argument, and Liz finishes it herself.
"It isn't just for athletes. Anybody, if they put their mind to it, can go out and achieve it."
"You don't have to fully run it. You can run, walk, and it's just such a big deal to be able to say you finished a marathon."
You can support Liz's fundraising for Team Hope ahead of the Dublin Marathon here.
