The week after the Dublin Marathon is a terrible time to have an internet connection if you didn’t finish it.
Medals everywhere. Finish-line photographs. Long posts about digging deep and discovering what you’re made of. Someone has arranged their runners, race number and medal on the kitchen table like the Gardaí showing off a drugs haul.
You’re delighted for them. Mostly. You’d also quite like your phone to fall into the sea.
You trained for it too, gave up alcohol, ate enough plain pasta to feed a small village in Tuscany, and spent eye watering money on running socks that promise "arch support". You had a plan for race day, a time in your head, perhaps even somebody waiting to see you finish.
Then it went to shite.
Now there are three letters beside your name: DNF. Did Not Finish.
An impressively economical way to summarise months of effort. Three letters. Even the cancellation email from your broadband provider pretends to care for longer.
You’re Allowed to Be Gutted
And yes, it hurts.
You don’t have to immediately find the lesson. You don’t have to announce that the setback has made you stronger. It happened a few days ago. You’re allowed to be disappointed before appointing yourself an inspirational speaker on your instagram story.
Perhaps you’ve replayed the moment you stopped. Perhaps you’re wondering whether you could have kept going. Perhaps you’ve avoided someone because you cannot face another conversation beginning, “So, how did you get on?”
People mean well. Unfortunately, that has never stopped them talking.
“At least you got to the start line.”
True. Although you had rather hoped to visit the other one.
“There’s always next year.”
Also true. There’s always the dentist, but you don’t necessarily want to book that while someone is still pulling the tooth.
You can appreciate the kindness and still wish everyone would shut their fucking mouth.
Keep the Enquiry Attached to the Race
What you shouldn’t do is let one unfinished race become evidence against your entire character.
Runners can be spectacularly efficient at this. A difficult afternoon becomes “I’m useless”. A missed goal becomes “I always let myself down”. Within an hour, you’ve promoted yourself from disappointed athlete to lead prosecutor and started introducing evidence from your Junior Cert.
Keep the enquiry attached to the actual event.
You didn’t finish the Dublin Marathon. That matters to you. It doesn’t tell us whether you’re a good parent, a decent friend or someone worth knowing. Nobody worth keeping in your life is assessing your character through your split times. If they are, congratulations: you’ve identified a much easier thing to drop.
Eventually, when you’re ready, it is worth looking honestly at what happened.
Did you set a target that reflected your training, or one that reflected how impressive it would sound afterwards? Did you start too quickly? Was your preparation consistent? Did something happen that you couldn’t reasonably have planned for?
There may be something to change. There may be several things. There may also be no neat explanation that makes the disappointment feel fair.
You can take responsibility for a mistake without calling yourself an idiot for the next six months. The point of reviewing the race is to help your future running. Self loathing is a fairly labour intensive substitute for a training plan.
And if you stopped because you were hurt or unwell, don’t let a stranger’s motivational caption rewrite that decision. “Pain is temporary” is a lovely sentiment from someone whose principal qualification is owning a ring light.
The guy who ran the very first marathon literally died at the end of it. That was the original benchmark. So when your body told you to stop at Mile 18, it wasn't being lazy, it was demonstrating basic evolutionary intelligence.
The people who pushed through a torn groin to finish in 5 hours and 42 minutes didn't "win." They just earned six months of physical therapy and a cheap piece of zinc alloy made in a factory in Shenzhen. You saved yourself hundreds in physio bills, walked back to your car without a limp and spent your Sunday evening eating a takeaway on the couch. Who’s the real winner here?
You don’t owe anybody a medical emergency to demonstrate enthusiasm.
Revenge Is Not a Training Plan
The next goal deserves a little thought, too.
There is a temptation to enter another marathon immediately. Something bigger, harder, sooner. You’ll show everyone.
Everyone is currently trying to remember whether they put the bins out. You can take your time.
Another marathon might be exactly what you want. But a shorter race is a perfectly respectable goal. So is a period of consistent running without chasing a time. So is remembering that you used to enjoy this before every Sunday became an unpaid endurance assessment.
When you do choose a target, give yourself something practical to work towards: a sensible training routine, better pacing, preparation you can fit around your actual life. Let the ambition be yours, rather than an attempt to settle an argument with a results page.
The Training Still Happened
You wanted the finish. You didn’t get it. There’s no need to pretend that a few good training runs are an exact substitute.
But those runs still happened. You still got yourself out the door when it would have been easier to stay inside. You still built towards something difficult. The race result cannot reach backwards and erase all of that.
For now, mute the medal posts if you need to. Congratulate your friends when you feel able. Tell people you’re gutted without adding a cheerful little speech to make them comfortable.
Then, when you’re ready, decide what you want from running next.
You owe Dublin no revenge. And you owe nobody a redemption montage.
You’re allowed to just go for a run.
