After shedding five stone, Eamonn Dargan is determined to keep up his marathon habit. He tells Emmet Malonehow running transformed his life
Having only started pounding the roads back in December, Eamonn Dargan is walking, or more precisely running, evidence of what can be achieved by combining a well thought out diet and an increased amount of exercise.
Before Christmas the 37 year-old, who lives in Perrystown, Dublin, weighed in at around 17 and a half stone. Now, it's 12 and a half and when I met him shortly after he had completed the Frank Duffy 10-mile race, it was hard to believe the scale of the transformation he had apparently undergone.
"It started when they were talking to us in work [ at B Braun Medical] last December about the professional goals that we might have for 2007," he says. "They asked were there any personal goals that I might have too and I mentioned that I'd like to run a 5k then a 10k and then maybe the marathon if I could."
He ended up skipping the shorter distance and made his debut in this year's Bupa-sponsored 10k in the Phoenix Park. Having gotten a taste for the competitive outings, he then ran a five mile in Walkinstown and the 10k organised to mark the opening of the new Gorey bypass.
Then came the Cork City marathon which allowed people to run the distance as part of a relay team containing up to five people.
Dargan did it with one other friend, Kay Bray from Ballincollig, covering three of the five legs or 14 miles himself before the pair met up to finish together.
In the week prior to the Phoenix Park race 10 days ago, he did an 18-mile training run after which his greatest complaint concerned neither tired legs nor blistered feet but the fact that the batteries on his Walkman had gone less than a quarter of the way into the outing.
"It hasn't always been easy, particularly doing the long runs by myself because there's nobody there to provide encouragement or to tell you to keep going when you really want to stop, but having said that I've enjoyed it so far.
"I've been doing the marathon route itself, picking off bits of it, short ones at first, now longer and it's helped to feel that I'll be back out there running the same roads for real in a couple of months' time."
Running alone, however, would not have accounted for nearly so dramatic a weight loss and Dargan has also dramatically altered his eating habits to achieve that particular goal.
"Like the running it takes discipline but I knew what I wanted to achieve and mapped out how I felt I could do it. Everybody knows the stuff not to eat," he observes. "The sugars, the sweets and desserts were the first things to go.
"Now I generally start out with porridge and wholegrain bread for breakfast, have wholemeal bread with cream cheese and some fruit for lunch and then in the evening I can relax a bit, usually I'd have chicken or beef with plenty of vegetables, pasta or brown rice. Along with all that I drink plenty of water and a fair few squash drinks.
"At the stage I'm at now I can even have a few treats, the odd takeaway, a few drinks, that sort of thing because I know I'm going to run it off the next day."
Given that he really doesn't have any more weight to lose, he will probably have to look at consuming a few more calories if he maintains his present mileage and there are certainly no signs of him letting up.
"After Dublin I'll have to find a new way to motivate myself so I'd imagine I'll look for another marathon to run. London is in April so I'll probably look at doing that next."