Niamh Lucas has three children under seven and is training for her first marathon, and she is very clear about how the preparation compares with pregnancy.
"I've had three children, and this is worse than carrying three children."
Then, in case that was not emphatic enough:
"There's no drugs can even help this."
She is a pharmacist in west Clare, working three or four days a week as a locum, and Dublin will be her first marathon. She is running it for MS Ireland, a charity she has more reason than most to care about, and she is fitting the training around a six year old, a two year old and one in the middle.
The Day Before We Spoke
If you want the shape of Niamh's life in a single Sunday, take the one immediately before this interview.
She ran nine kilometres in the morning. Then she ran the Lahinch half marathon. Then she went home and hosted her three year old's birthday party, while her husband Robert, as she puts it, "snuck out after putting in a shift" with the children.
"I was like, oh, for fun."
She is quick to credit Robert for the support that makes her training possible. Between their community commitments, young children, a farm, work and raffling heifers, theirs is a busy household.
"He always makes sure that I get out for a run even when I don’t want to go!"
"He is my number one fan!"
As for the training advice she keeps getting served on her phone, some of it bears little relation to life with three young children.
"I'm watching these young 20 year olds, and they have no kids, and they're on Instagram, and they're like, rest on your rest days. And I'm like, what in the name of God is a rest day?"
Standing all day at work does not help the cause either.
"My legs are withered at the moment, because I stand for work, you see."
She is honest that the whole thing has taken more out of her than she expected.
"It's a lot more time consuming than I thought it was going to be, I'll be honest. But it is very enjoyable. It is."
Not a Runner, for a Long Time
Niamh was not sporty as a child, and she is refreshingly matter of fact about why.
"I was obviously more into my books than I was into sports."
Her brother played rugby because her father loved rugby. Her mother was not sporty either. Nobody stopped Niamh doing anything, it simply never came up.
"Now it wasn't that we couldn't. But it was just that we didn't."
The way in was a gym membership in fifth or sixth year, then the treadmill, then the road. She kept it going through college, which happened to be in Hertfordshire, because she missed the Irish points for pharmacy by five.
The detail of how she ended up in England is a small story in itself. She had planned to repeat, and the college she was going to repeat in turned her down on the basis that she might miss by five again.
"They were like, just go ring every college in England. That's what I did, and I ended up over in Hertfordshire."
She never intended to stay, and she did not. She came home, registered, and has been working here since. Locum work is a recent change and she rates it highly.
"There's not very many jobs where you could go in and cover and then walk away from it. It gives you great flexibility. Especially once you have kids, it's brilliant."
She ran through her college years, did the mini marathon in Limerick, and never went longer than that, largely for want of anyone to drag her along.
Then she got married, had a child a year later, and that was that for the guts of six years.
"My kids are close in age, so they range from six to two. I had a couple of years there where it just wasn't feasible."
She adds a caveat about herself that a lot of people will recognise.
"Now, again, that's me using every excuse under the sun. I probably could have managed something, but I didn't. I just didn't have the mindset to go back."
The Soccer Team
What broke the spell was a sport she turned out to be no good at.
A friend's husband started a local soccer team and Niamh went along. Two things became apparent quickly. The first was her aptitude for soccer.
"I was dire at soccer. Absolutely dire."
The second was more serious.
"I realised how unfit I had gotten when I went to the soccer. I was like, oh, this is terrible. I'm still young. I need to do something."
She also discovered she had no interest at all in the team side of it, which she had suspected. So she went home, saw that the Lahinch half marathon was on, and registered for it.
No 5k first. No 10k. Straight in at a half.
"I went straight in at a half marathon. And I was like, oh gosh, when I started training for it."
She ran it in just over two hours, three or four months after starting back from nothing, and she loved the whole thing, including the training.
The Limerick 10k followed in February or March, and that is where the marathon idea came from, for a very practical reason.
"I need to train for something a bit longer, because I'm not really focused when it's only 10k."
And the charity came in the same breath.
"Then I was like, I'll do Dublin. And then I was like, I'll do Dublin for charity, because it'll spur me to keep going."
A Coach, a Phone Call, and a Plan That Moves
Niamh is not in a club. What she has instead is a coach, and she was clear-eyed about needing one.
"When I started for the Dublin marathon, I looked at stuff online and I was like, this is way too much. I can't do this myself. I'm definitely someone that needs to answer to someone."
So she asked Kaylee McCormack, from Kilfenora just up the road, who now lives in Kildare and whose cousin Niamh is friendly with. There is a phone call twice a week and a plan on TrainingPeaks, and the great virtue of the arrangement is that the plan bends around the childcare rather than the other way round.
"Monday and Tuesday never work, because I have to mind the kids after school. But Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, they're during and after school. So I can just shift it around."
The results speak for themselves.
"I haven't missed any run, actually, in fairness. I might miss a strength session every now and then, but the runs, I do fit in."
And there is a simpler reason underneath all of it.
"Anyway, it gets me out of the house."
Gels, Bottles and Being Five Foot Two
Niamh fuels on High5 gels, one every half hour, and she has a good line on why the smaller ones suit her.
"They have only 23 grams of carbs, but that's grand, because I'm only five foot two. There's not a lot of me here."
She added caffeine ones recently and is cheerfully agnostic about whether they did anything.
"That gave me a bit of a boost halfway around. Whether it did or not psychologically, I like to think it gave me a boost."
Her overall verdict on gels is the most honest one anybody has given in this series.
"They are what they are. I can't imagine what they do to your insides, but they're grand. They work. They do work."
Her coach gave her a carbohydrate and electrolyte mix to try for the Lahinch half, and the product was not the problem. Carrying it was.
"I had to carry a bottle around and I was like, oh no, this isn't it."
She met her sister in law, who was stewarding, halfway round the course and handed it over.
"Take that off me, that's really annoying me. I had gels in my pocket anyway. I figured out that doesn't work for me."
The Pharmacist's View on Supplements
Given the day job, it is worth asking Niamh what she takes. The answer is almost nothing, and she has thought about it more than most.
"Any doctor I've ever spoken to is like, if you eat well and you mind yourself and you do what you're supposed to, you shouldn't need anything extra in your diet."
She has a dietitian friend who says much the same, that protein powder has its moment but that your best source of protein is chicken or something else you can recognise.
Her own reasoning is anatomical.
"Your body regulates itself. Your kidneys are working full time, and your liver. They all work. They don't need anything extra."
So the complete list is electrolytes, an ORS sachet when she gets in from a long run, and two paracetamol when her legs have had enough, which they had the day before we spoke.
On the wider industry she is less gentle.
"I think some people do need them. But I think they're a massive money market. They're a huge money market."
The Man Who Ran Barefoot
Niamh's favourite argument against gear obsession is not about gear at all. It is about a neighbour of hers.
He is in his early eighties, spent years in America and was home last week. He ran for Ireland at the Olympics in the 1950s and finished twelfth. He came ninth in one of the big American marathons, Chicago or Boston, she cannot remember which. He ran barefoot. He came second in another marathon and only lost it because he was dehydrated.
"We've changed so much. We're so precious now."
The same logic applies to her own kit, which has not troubled her budget.
"I've been running the same pair of shorts for about the two years now. I saw something on Instagram the other day, it was like, you know you're an over 35 runner if it's whatever is clean that comes out of the press. That's definitely my life."
And on people buying new outfits for a marathon:
"It's not going to make you any faster."
The MS
The reason for the charity choice is the part of Niamh's story she came to last, and she tells it plainly.
She lost the vision in one eye in fifth year, before the Leaving Cert. It came back. Nobody could work out what had happened, and it went unresolved.
"Then it happened again when I was in first year in college, which wasn't great, because I was back over in England."
That meant the NHS, brain MRIs and, as she puts it, the whole shebang, a long way from home. Her vision came back perfectly again. A consultant in England told her she had MS.
She came home for the summer, went to her GP, got in under a neurologist here, and the diagnosis was confirmed.
She has been on medication ever since, and she counts herself lucky.
"Touch wood, I've had absolutely no bother whatsoever."
The running came out of that, in a roundabout way, and it started long before the marathon did.
"The best thing you can do with a long term illness like that is actually mind yourself. That's why I went into running when I was in college, because it's use it or lose it."
Why MS Ireland
Niamh picked MS Ireland off the list of charities on the fundraising platform, and her reasoning is not sentimental at all.
Through the pharmacy counter she meets people with MS who have had nothing like her luck, and she credits the medication for the difference.
"Younger generations, we don't get it as bad, because the drugs are so good for it now. They can recognise it and pull you back out when you have a relapse. You can get back out of it quicker."
As she understands it, MS Ireland is largely supporting the people who were diagnosed before that was true.
"They're helping people that maybe the drugs that were available back in the day weren't as good, so therefore their disease progressed more rapidly."
And there is a second reason, which she states without any drama.
"I may need them in the future. I just thought it was the closest one to me, and you need to run for a reason."
Her wider view, as somebody who spends her working days dispensing medicine, is that prevention is the whole game.
"We're given one body. If you're not going to mind it, what do you want us to do with this?"
"The condition that I have, I can't do anything about. But I can try and help myself to the best with it."
"I Have No Bother Asking People for Money"
While half the country breaks out in a sweat at the thought of a fundraising page, Niamh took to it without a bother, and she says that is part of why she went the charity route in the first place.
"I have no bother asking people for money. I'd straight up send it into the family groups, and I would send it multiple times until they start to donate."
Every ten days or so, she goes again.
"Every kind of ten days, I hit them all again."
Most of what she has raised has come from close to home, and she is generous about it.
"I'm really lucky where we're from. People are very generous. Most of what I've fundraised so far is local, and they're all fifty, a hundred euro. They're very good."
She hit her target already, and has treated everything since as a bonus.
Two Girls and a Boy
There is a reason Niamh wants to be seen going out the door, and it is not about fitness.
"You do lose your identity. There's no denying it once you have kids, because you're completely on them. Every whim they need, you have to do that. But I just find that it's just something for yourself, and it's no harm for them to see."
She has two daughters and a son, and she is direct about the difference.
"The boy will be gone, because he'll see Robert going off playing football. But you don't want the girls to think that mam's just staying at home. That's what happened in my house, but that's twenty, thirty years ago. That's the way it was."
"It's time to change that. Women do get out, and they are more of a role model for their daughters."
Sport is not exactly absent from the house. Robert teaches in an all girls school in Ennis, is heavily into ladies football, and there is a strong ladies team locally.
"It's a women in sport thing as well. They can be brilliant if they want to, if they're given the same opportunity."
There was a small illustration of all this the same weekend. A friend took Niamh's youngest girl to an athletics meet, and she came home pleased with a medal. Niamh told her straight that everyone who ran got one, and that she had not won her own race either.
What she asked her was whether she finished it.
She was also struck by what her friend reported from the sideline, where the parents of seven and eight year olds were shouting.
"Those seven year olds have probably learned to hate it. You have to be very careful, because they learn to think, I only ever get shouted at when I go to this thing. Why would I bother wanting to go?"
The Unexpected Bit
There is one thing Niamh did not expect from marathon training, and it has nothing to do with running.
"Since I started marathon training, I have great energy in other parts of my life that I haven't had in years. Cleaning the house, putting away the clothes, you're just more proactive."
"Even though you should be wrecked. You just have more life in you."
She is aware this is impossible to sell to anyone who has not felt it.
"It's hard until you feel it. It's very difficult to put it into context for them until you feel it yourself."
"Just Keep Moving Forward"
Ask Niamh for advice for someone who has never run and she does not talk about plans or paces. She talks about the people who were still out on the course at Lahinch long after she had finished, showered and been collected.
Robert wondered aloud whether they might have been doing the 10k.
"I think they're brilliant. They were struggling. They were walking some of it, but they were still going forward."
"Just walk, jog, drag yourself, but just keep moving forward. That's all you have to do. If you have to walk a bit, you're still walking. You're doing better than the person that didn't run the race."
She has the same admiration for the people finishing a marathon last.
"You always see those older people running marathons and they finish when everyone's done. They're brilliant. There are people in nursing homes that couldn't do what they're doing."
She is careful about the word race, too.
"I like to say I run, because people are like, oh, you're racing today. And I'm like, no. I'm not racing at all. I'm running."
That said, she has plenty of time for the people at the sharp end, and she is clear about what it costs them.
"The things they give up, what they sacrifice to be that good, is massive."
The one athlete she names unprompted is Mark English, and what she admires is not the talent.
"How many times did he not get it? And he kept going back, and he gave up his job, which was a massive job. Look what he did when you try. That's what it is, when you keep going and keep turning up."
She knows the top end can put people off entirely.
"It can be a bit off putting when you see those lads finishing in one fifteen and you're like, Jesus Christ, I couldn't do that. But if you try, you don't know where it's going to take you."
She is, after all, the proof of that.
"Did I think I was going to run a marathon after my second child? I decided, go away, that's never going to happen."
No Target, and No Apologies
Niamh has not committed to a time for Dublin, and she has thought about why.
"I would like to do it in a good time. But also, I think just getting to the start line is a massive achievement, to be honest. In my situation, I'm delighted with myself even doing that."
She is realistic that this might be it for a while, given what the last few months have cost her in Saturdays.
Robert had a simpler read on the whole enterprise when he heard she was doing this interview. He reckoned she was only running a marathon to get a break from the house.
"I was like, yeah. That's pretty much it, actually."
She had to go on the dot of noon. The middle child finishes preschool at twelve, and she was already cutting it fine.
You can support Niamh's fundraising for MS Ireland ahead of the Dublin Marathon here.
