Michael O'Connor signed up for the Dublin Marathon about twelve months ago, from a standing start, with no distance running behind him whatsoever.
"It felt very easy a year ago to say, I'll do the Dublin Marathon. That'll be great crack."
He laughs at himself a bit at this point, because we are speaking in late September with a month to go.
"And now that it's September, it's a month away, I'm like, wow, there's actually a lot more to this."
He is from Skerries, lives in Glasnevin with his fiancée Lara, and works in cash management sales for an American bank on North Wall Quay. In October he runs his first marathon for the Irish Cancer Society, in memory of his mother.
The Job Nobody Can Describe
Start with the day job, because Michael's own description of it is the most relatable thing about him.
"It's a bit of a tough one to understand, but it's basically cash management sales. If those words make any sense."
They mostly do not, and he knows it.
"It's one of those where even my family don't fully understand what I do."
The office sits down in the docklands, across the water from a row of other American banks, beside CHQ and Dogpatch Labs, though the whole operation is moving in a couple of months to a new building next door to the 3Arena.
September is his busiest stretch of the year at work, with everybody back from holidays at once and everything moving together.
It is also the month his mother died.
Thirteen Years
Michael's mother died in September 2025, having lived with cancer for thirteen years.
She was first diagnosed when Michael was sitting his Junior Cert and his younger sister Kate had just started secondary school, which meant the two of them were young enough at the time not to fully register what was happening around them.
It began in her lower intestine. In the later years it spread.
Most of those thirteen years contained a Friday that looked the same.
"She went in, I think, every Friday for chemotherapy for close to thirteen years, on and off. So that was her driving in the early hours of the morning, going down the M1 into the hospitals."
Michael is measured when he talks about the months after she passed, and what he describes will be recognisable to anybody who has been through it.
"It was a weird period where I didn't really know what to do with myself. You have time off from work."
"It's such a big moment in anyone's life when a parent passes away. It's only myself and my younger sister, Kate. She was such an important person in our lives."
The Idea
What turned that into a marathon was somebody else's fundraiser.
A friend of Michael's had lost a parent about eighteen months earlier and had raised money by cycling from Dublin to Cork. That sat in the back of his head until it took a shape of its own.
"That was kind of a bit in my head, and I was like, I really want to do something and try and raise money for the Irish Cancer Society, because they do such amazing work, and the services they give to people going through cancer are amazing."
He is clear that he wanted two things out of it at once, and he says so without dressing it up.
"I kind of wanted to, one, help a bit with the grief, to have something going on that I can work towards, and try and raise a good bit of money for a very good cause."
Skerries
Michael was a sporty kid without ever being a runner.
Rugby was the main one, and he played second row, for a reason that will make sense to anyone who was an early developer.
"I got up in height when I was 13 to the height I am now. So when I was 13 I was the tallest kid around. But then everyone else shot up way higher than me. Everyone was looking up to me, and then within about three or four years I was looking back up at them."
There was GAA football, a good bit of swimming, and tennis, which he took up for reasons of pure peer pressure.
"I picked up tennis because I had friends who were playing tennis and I wasn't. And I was like, I want to play this. All my friends are doing it."
He credits the town for a lot of that. Skerries when he was growing up had two schools, so your friends were all doing whatever was going, and everything was close enough together that showing up was easy.
"It's quite a sporty town. All the activities in school were geared towards sports and the local teams. It was quite a great community. It's a small place, so it's encouraged for all the kids to try and get involved in as many sports as you can. There was always something going on."
Distance running, though, was a blank page.
"Distance running, zero. I go to the gym pretty frequently, so I had some sort of a base to begin with. But in terms of cardio fitness, the base was pretty low."
Couch to 5K, and a Paid-Up Subscription
So he did what a lot of people do now, which is download an app and hand the problem over.
"I literally did a couch to 5k. I downloaded Runna, paid for the annual subscription, and I was starting from a base of zero."
He has stuck to it with more discipline than most.
"I've been following the plan pretty religiously. I feel like it's kind of taken over my life slightly."
He is honest that the structure is part of the appeal, because he has no frame of reference of his own to fall back on. The plan tells him what the session is, and he does the session. One recent one was a 24k run split into 12k conversational and 12k at marathon pace of 4:50 per kilometre, which he got through and felt fine after.
The Race He Missed and the Race He Got
Somebody put Michael onto the Dublin Race Series, which is the obvious way to get a few races into your legs in the build-up. By the time he went looking, it had sold out.
"The only race that was left was the 10 mile race. And it was actually the one weekend we were going away."
Laura's brother lives in Munich, so the pair of them were over visiting. Michael did a long run out there instead, which he does not recommend as a substitute.
"It was so hot. It was, I think, 33 or 34 degrees. I went early in the morning, I left at seven or half seven. But oh my god, the heat. Going back home and doing the runs here was so much easier than going through that."
That leaves the Clontarf half marathon in the summer as his only race to date, which he ran in 1:56, and which taught him two useful lessons.
The first was about wind.
"It was very windy on the day. The first half was a breeze, literally. And then the second half was straight into the wind."
The second was about turning up on time, and it is the sort of rookie error that any first timer reading this should file away.
"I had read up, and the wave I was going to be in was the second or third wave. So I was like, that's perfect. It starts at ten, I'll rock up at five to ten and slot into my wave."
"And I had no idea that I was literally in wave seven, or the last waves, because it was just mayhem. There's so many people, and it was like sardines squeezing in to try and get into all the waves."
He has learned from it, and his plan for the marathon is the exact opposite.
"On the day of the marathon, I'll be showing up a lot earlier. I'll be in my wave at the right time, and I'll definitely be a lot better prepared."
Gels, and the Granules of Sugar
The part of marathon training that took Michael longest to sort out was not the mileage. It was fuelling.
"They're probably the bit I found nearly the hardest to get used to, just how that settles in the stomach while running."
He started on High5, the liquid gels, and could not stick them.
"I found them too sweet. After having a few of them, my teeth and everything, you know that sugary, you can feel the granules of sugar. I was like, that's just nasty."
His logic for changing was sound.
"If I couldn't do it for a half marathon, I wouldn't be able to do it for a full marathon."
He read a pile of reviews, saw SiS coming up repeatedly, and switched. The full race day strategy got its first proper test on his 34k long run the weekend before we spoke.
"They went down fine. By the end of it I felt a bit nauseous, but while I was running it was all okay."
He is giving it a few more weekends before he calls it settled, on the basis that getting used to them is most of the battle.
"Just using these long runs to get used to how they hit the stomach is the key for now."
The same thinking applies to breakfast, which he now rehearses in full, and which is the least glamorous part of the whole operation.
"I've been waking up early doors to try and wolf in oats with honey, sourdough bread with jam, all this sort of stuff, to try and simulate race day conditions."
"It's really taking over my weekends."
Thirty-Four Kilometres, and the Boredom
The 34k last Sunday went fine physically. Mentally it was another matter entirely, and his description of it is the most honest thing anybody in this series has said about long runs.
"By the end, oh my god, I was so bored. I was tired of listening to podcasts. I was tired of listening to music. I just was so bored at the end. I just wanted peace nearly. I couldn't listen to anything."
He is not in a club, and every kilometre of the last twelve months has been done on his own. That is about to change slightly, because he has friends in the marathon who are now at the same point in their plans.
"They're at that stage where it's 30 kilometre plus runs, so I'll definitely be jumping in with them for a few runs just to try and break it up."
The App Says 3:30. Michael Says No.
Runna's prediction for him is a 3:30 marathon. Michael has read the forums, listened to the podcasts and decided he is not doing that.
"3:30 is what the app has told me. What my actual goal is is just sub four hours."
"The pace I'll be going out at will be a little bit slower than that. It's slow and steady rather than going out at 4:50 and trying to maintain that the entire time."
He has heard enough horror stories to know how the alternative ends.
"I do not want to crash and burn. I want to avoid that if I can and just actually get through it."
And then he puts the time question in its place entirely.
"At the end of the day, I'm not doing this to get any time. I'm honestly just doing this to finish the race and do the best I can. And the real goal is just to try and raise as much money and awareness for the cancer society."
€7,000, and Being Your Own Worst Enemy
This is the section worth reading twice if you have a charity place and have been putting off telling anybody about it.
Michael expected to hate the fundraising.
"It's that typical Irish thing where you feel so awkward asking people for money."
He was wrong, and he found out quickly.
"Once I put it out there, people are so generous. Cancer is something that so many people, it's touched them, or it's touched someone they know in their lives."
He sent one email around the office and the response floored him. A couple of weeks before we spoke he put it up on Instagram, and the donations came in on top of that. He is just past €7,000.
His verdict on the dread beforehand is the most useful thing he says.
"You're probably your own worst enemy. It's like, oh god, the thought of having to reach out to so many people and sending this out. I'll just be annoying them or whatever. It's definitely not the case."
"How it actually is in reality versus how you build it up in your head. People are more than happy to see it. If someone sent something like that on to me, I'd definitely be the first person to give a donation and write a nice message."
What the Money Does
Michael is careful to say he does not know the full range of what the Irish Cancer Society does, and that some of it his family may never have used. What he does know, he explains from the inside of thirteen years.
The first thing he points to is money, because cancer is expensive in ways that are invisible from the outside.
"The support they give to people going through cancer, it can be such a financial burden. It's expensive, and I think they give people a lot of peace of mind with that."
The second is the one that clearly means the most to him, and it comes straight out of all those Friday mornings on the M1.
"The fact that they have services where they can drive people to their appointments, who don't have cars, who don't have that luxury or someone who can drive them, it's amazing."
He mentions the counselling too, which is there for families as much as for the person going through it, and the research, and the sheer visibility of Daffodil Day.
"The fact that they get the rightful visibility, it's amazing what they do. Every cent they get goes to really worthwhile places."
"I'm Not Doing This for Myself"
Ask Michael whether he would recommend running a marathon for a cause and you get a qualified yes, with the qualification being that he has not done it yet.
"Come back to me afterwards and I might give you a better answer when it's all over."
But a month out, he has already worked out what the charity has done for the training, and it is not what people assume.
"It can be hard to fully stay motivated all the time, especially when you've got things in life going on. Waking up early before work to go for a run can sometimes feel like such a slog."
"And then other weeks, you get a donation or something like that, and you get a reminder of what you're doing it all for, and it just makes those runs so much easier."
"It's that simple reminder all the time of, I'm not doing this for myself."
The Last Twelve Months
Asked at the end whether there was anything he wanted to get across, Michael gave an answer aimed squarely at anyone reading this who has lost a parent.
"The grief of last year, it's been really hard to get through. And I think doing something like this in my mom's memory has made it a lot easier, that there's been a goal for the last twelve months."
Then he corrects himself mid-sentence, and the correction is the most honest moment in the whole conversation.
"It's made last year a lot. Not easier. It's not been an easy year. But just having something like that to work towards, I think, really helps. Keeping yourself busy. This is definitely one thing that has kept me busy the last twelve months."
He is quick to say it would not suit everybody.
"It's not for everyone. Definitely not. But it's definitely something that I've found has helped quite a lot."
On the Day
There will be family out on the course, and colleagues, and a fair few friends. Michael's ambition for the day itself is modest and entirely correct.
"I just want to enjoy it, really. I feel like I've done all the hard work."
He has been told what to expect from the crowds through the residential stretches, and got a small taste of it at Clontarf.
"There were parts of the run where people were out, kids getting high fives and stuff like that. It was really nice. It really does give you an uplift."
You will be able to pick him out. He will be in a bright yellow Irish Cancer Society T-shirt.
The photo on his fundraising page is of him and his mum.
You can support Michael's fundraising for the Irish Cancer Society ahead of the Dublin Marathon here.
The Irish Cancer Society Support Line is free on 1800 200 700, for anyone affected by cancer.
