The surge in the numbers taking up running has surprised the organisers of the Dublin City Marathon – but nobody is complaining
IT MAY seem a little strange given the importance attached in sport itself to being number one, but apparently there are no reliable figures relating to sales of running shoes in Britain or Ireland, leaving companies to hire people to stand on the side of the road at events like the London marathon to tot up what brands are on how many feet.
The fact that the numbers in races across Ireland, Britain and far beyond are rising so quickly, though, suggests that when it comes to the battle between the likes of Adidas, Nike and Asics right now, pretty much everyone’s a winner.
Anyone requiring evidence of the scale of the boom that the sport is experiencing in this country need only to wander along to the Phoenix Park this Saturday morning where the third event in the annual Adidas/Lifestyle Sports sponsored Race Series, the half-marathon, is due to take place.
The series was originally devised a few years back as a way of encouraging people to enter the then struggling Dublin marathon. However, with entries up for this weekend’s final preparatory race to some 7,500 from about 4,400 last year – broadly in line with the percentage increases for the five- and 10-mile events during the summer – there is a very real prospect that the showpiece might actually be passed out by the rehearsal soon in terms of numbers participating.
Needless to say, nobody is complaining. “Obviously, we’re delighted,” says Jim Aughney, race director for the marathon. “We were expecting a rise but not anything on this scale. It’s great, although early in the year you have to nail your colours to the mast in terms of how many T-shirts you think you’ll need, and so there’s bit of panic on that front.”
The numbers are also critical to maintain the growth of the Dublin marathon at a time when foreign participation continues to fall off, particularly from the United States. “We’ve been very fortunate,” he says, “because the increase here has more than offset the decline in the number of visitors.
“Last year the Irish entry in the marathon was over 50 per cent for the first time and this year that figure’s likely to be 60 per cent or even higher.”
The figures don’t come as any surprise to anyone in the business and most, Frank Greally of Irish Runner magazine and Athletics Ireland included, believe that there is a good deal more to the current running boom than there was to the one more than a quarter of a century ago that quickly fizzled out.
“Yeah, there’s an extent to which you can argue that we’ve seen it all before in the early 1980s alright, but I think it will be more sustained this time,” he says.
“People are more aware of the health reasons now and they also see it as a social outlet. We’re seeing groups from offices and roads coming to events. A few start training and others join in. And I think people are less concerned with the competitive side of it now than they were back then,” says Greally.
“In the 1980s there was a fierce focus on beating your time. Now it’s a lot more about getting or staying healthy and then, in terms of races, getting a bit of enjoyment out of it. People are using events as an excuse for a weekend away with an achievement thrown in.”
Paul Moloney of Adidas agrees, and points to the ease of access as a key reason for the sport’s spiralling popularity, as well as its strength of appeal across the various sections of the population.
“People tend to look for a bit of information on training and that before they start,” he says “But basically it’s a case of a decent pair of shoes and off you go. The upshot is that it’s attracting people from across the board. If you look at who is running in an average race, there are people of all abilities, from every walk of life and an almost 50:50 mix between men and women. It’s phenomenal.”
Like most commentators, Moloney feels that the financial situation nationally and internationally is one ingredient in the mix.
Aughney also agrees: “Back in January,” he suggests, “there were probably quite a few people with a newspaper, in which everybody was predicting doom and gloom, in one hand and a letter from the gym with this year’s membership fees in the other. They looked out the window and decided there was a certain appeal to trying something different.”
David Hart of Nova International, the British company behind about 20 major annual events, including the Great North, Manchester and Irish Runs in which more than 150,000 people across Britain and Ireland participated last year, agrees that cost is a factor.
However, he also argues that it is as much a case of the major events driving the boom as the other way around.
“Our events wouldn’t be the cheapest,” he says, “but our aim is to provide great value for money and great experiences. And we generally find that when somebody enters an event it tends to trigger an almost immediate change in lifestyle because they have something to aim for: they exercise more while eating and drinking less.
“In theory,” he adds, “there’s a lot of work done by government agencies and the like to get people to that stage but the reality is that it often manifests itself in the form of leaflets in doctors’ surgeries and the like while we are the ones actually getting people to go out there and do it.”
Like the Race Series, the Great Irish Run, a 10km race staged in mid-April that offers T-shirts, “goody bags” and a very high level of organisation, has experienced huge growth recently, with numbers up to 10,000 this year from about 8,000 in 2008. Hart is hoping that the rate of acceleration might enjoy dramatic further growth now that the event has hit what he believes is a sort of critical mass.
“There seems to be a natural momentum to events that break the 10,000 barrier, you end up with an awful lot of people who, if they have a good experience, act as ambassadors for the race and so recruit others. We’re hoping that’s what is going to happen with Ireland. We see it as having the potential to have not just 10,000 but 25,000 or 30,000.”
A couple of weeks after organising the first Dingle marathon and half-marathon, Ken Dunne’s aims are somewhat more modest, but with the first races having attracted 400 and 1,700 respectively and, he says, prompted hugely positive feedback from participants, he does see room for significant growth next year and beyond.
“One thing is for sure, the trend is upwards at the moment,” says Dunne, an operations manager with a bar/restaurant in Limerick who started running himself only four years ago,
“Having put together the first one in eight months or so, I’m hoping things will be bigger and better when I have a full year to work with. And if there was to be a downturn in that, then it’s the best that will survive – the best organised, the best scenery, the best perks. My belief is that this race has the potential to be something very special in the calendar, not just in Ireland, but internationally.”
Everyone agrees that some events may be squeezed over time, with Greally accepting that some less well-organised ones are of “questionable value” even now. At least for the moment, however, there seems to be comfortably enough runners to go around.
