I wasn’t planning on running the marathon this year, I had other plans for a spring marathon in 2020 to mark me reaching the milestone of the big 40 in March, but I got caught up in all the hype and the excitement of the Sunday long run group in their early training days and I needed in on the action. I thought I’d try for one of the late tickets released in July and leave it down to fate, if I got one I'd run, if I didn’t then so be it, I'd stick to my 2020 plan. The luck of the Irish was on my side and I was one of the lucky 2500 to get one. I had run Dublin way back in 2006 as a tourist visiting the city, it was my 5th marathon to run in my mid-twenties and it was my last. I may as well have been running anywhere in the world as I didn’t know the city or the route. I ran the course in around 3hrs 40mins. Fast forward 13 years, and I have been living in this wonderful city for 10 of those years, threatening to join a running club since I made the move but never doing...