It's a Dad's Life: 'Big days" don't come round all that often - births, deaths, marriages, things that shake you up and remind you what's important. I had a big day on Monday. I ran the Dublin City Marathon, my first. Now, a day later, my right foot is throbbing and can't bear weight, my back, shoulders and knees are creaking, and I am insatiably hungry and thirsty, writes Adam Brophy.
It was, by a country mile, the most difficult physical test I have ever endured. The memories are entering my head like flashbacks of a traumatic event. What was an immensely pleasant experience for 90 minutes was followed by just over three hours of foot-crushing, gut-wrenching, blind stumbling with a single mantra beating a tattoo on my mind: "You can't stop." Today, I am so proud I didn't stop.
I read about the man who collapsed on the course in the Terenure area and died before reaching hospital. He would have been a short distance behind me. At that point of the race I remember exhausted people all around - nobody was wise-cracking any more, like at the start. The drive to the end had begun in earnest. And this man would have been in the same boat, but something happened to his body he could not have foreseen and the worst scenario unfolded. The use of the word "tragedy" in sport is commonplace and often misplaced; here was tragedy in sport in its purest, most awful form.
My longest run up to then had been about 18 miles, and that had resulted in a pretty severe state of exhaustion. I needed to be able to do that again, then keep trucking for another eight. Six months ago, if you had told me I would be capable of running eight miles, never mind the rest, I would have slapped you like a starlet in a black and white movie to relieve your hysteria. On Monday, the eight miles was just the extra bit.
The kids think I'm an athlete, and that makes me laugh. It's one of those beliefs you want the nippers to hold on to about you, because when reality kicks in they will trip up your newly discovered feet of clay. I have convinced the elder I'm a decorated general who fought not only in Vietnam but also at the Somme. I have competed in a number of Olympics and played professional football for some of the greatest sides of the 1970s and 1980s. And no one can take me in a fight, you just ask that fella used to call himself Cassius Clay. Taught him to get lippy.
The younger, of course, just ignores me.
My fantastic exploits span time and space, so I was quite prepared for the dawning of realisation that would surely come as the elder watched her stricken father lurch towards the finish line, after many thousands of others had already crossed. The dawning never came; when your kid is five it's easy to be a hero. They were waiting at College Green, little cardboard banner held aloft. It made the last 400 yards almost pleasant. The missus told me afterwards she had been terrified she would burst into tears if I looked in a state, but the kids thought I bounced by quite jauntily. It didn't feel jaunty. They couldn't understand why I refused to play Twister later that evening.
"Do you get a big trophy if you win, Dad?" I had been asked in advance. For once I kept things real and explained that there would be thousands of runners, most of them faster than me, and the achievement would be in just finishing. The elder looked me in the eye, like a seasoned pro boosting the raw, young buck's confidence on the eve of his big league debut, and told me not to worry, I'd win the trophy. Instead, like about 10,000 others, I came home with a medal. There may have been 10,000, but they were all, like anyone who has ever done a marathon, extraordinary. The elder was right. I did win the trophy.
