![Ann Marie McGlynn: 'When I was getting it [the national marathon cup] engraved I said to the guy, ‘I hope I’ll have that back to you next year’. Photograph: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/BZBXO5JG4OTWIWH4VWHYD4YHBU.jpg?auth=27fc4c525e295cbf928166566e8b23961cf7b0566f1288d6a1fc4b9554f47431&smart=true&width=1024&height=671)
Like any moment in life of profound sadness and loss, Ann-Marie McGlynn will never forget where she was or what she was doing.
It was this week of October 1998, back when she was the still teenage running prodigy Ann-Marie Larkin, from Tullamore, fresh into her first term at University College Dublin (UCD).
Courted by several colleges in the US, including Providence, the then 18-year-old decided instead to pursue her running at UCD with the coach Noel Carroll.
Like many athletes of a certain generation, she didn’t need to be told about Carroll’s status in the sport – a two-time Olympian over 400m/800m, European and World Indoor record holder, and co-founder of the Dublin Marathon in 1980.
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“I was supposed to go to Providence, and chickened out, just said ‘I can’t do it’,” McGlynn says now. “So I went to Dublin, and he [Carroll] took a chance on me.
“He was just a legend. I can even see him now, his face, driving into UCD, his white hair, just the way he was with the guys. You have to remember I was the only girl, it was tough. But he always made me feel welcome.”
So to that fateful lunchtime run round Belfield on the Friday, October 23rd, just four days before the start of the 1998 Dublin Marathon, when after finishing a five-mile loop with the Walker twins, Andrew and Kevin, Carroll suddenly dropped dead in front of them. He was only 56 years of age.
McGlynn was spared the trauma of witnessing it, in part because Carroll himself had advised her to head home for the Halloween weekend.
“I remember about two weeks out from when he died, he pulled me aside at the sports centre, from where we used to run around at lunchtime. All the boys were there, and he was like, ‘Ann Marie, I’m so glad I took a chance on you, you’ll fit this programme 100 per cent, I’ve no worries and I’m excited’.
“Then it came to the Halloween weekend, he said on the Thursday evening, ‘Do you want to go home, or do you want to meet us on Friday?’ I was undecided and he was like, ‘Go home, go home early’.
“And then he met Andrew and Kevin. So I wasn’t there . . . but my last conversations with him were second to none, he was so proud to take me under his wing. It was hard for me, I was only with him a couple of months, but the bond we had formed stayed with me.
“I think it was Dave [Matthews] who rang me to tell me. Then I remember we went to his funeral, and we had a run in our programme that day, and the boys were like, ‘We can’t miss it, let’s go’. And I’ll never forget running around UCD and it rained heavy on us, I just thought, ‘he’s testing us!’”
Fast forward a decade or so, and after winning the Irish indoor title over 800m in 2008, having won her first national underage title at age 13, McGlynn drifted away from running. She’d met her husband Trevor through his training group and, although they briefly contemplated moving back in Tullamore, settled instead in Strabane, Co Tyrone.
“We went to Tullamore for a wet week, and he was like, ‘no, it’s not for me’ and he had a place eyed up for a barber shop just outside Strabane.
“That was us tied into the North, but I loved it, and it [running] just got harder then. I wasn’t doing the work I should have been doing. I was kind of kidding myself, ‘I’ll do half of that, a bit of this’. Then I put my hand up, and said I’d rather step away and not waste someone’s time coaching me.
“I never talked about coming back, never followed athletics even when I was out. Trevor would say ‘she’s running well’, but I had no interest, never watched it, had no bad feeling towards it. Or regret. Or miss it. It’s mad.
“I did a bit of, you know, partying and loving life, then we set a date, got married, then we had Lexie, then Alfie . . .”
McGlynn trails off here, because this also marked the next turning point in her running career; three weeks after his birth in 2012, Alfie was taken to hospital with a severe dose of bronchiolitis and a collapsed lung.
“He was originally in hospital for three weeks, between Derry, rushed to ITU in Belfast, then back to Derry to recover. The nurses in Derry thought he’d never be back, but you look at him now, you’d know nothing, he knows nothing, he asks the odd question, but I think that’s why he has the connection with my running.
“But back then I just needed something. We were just told maybe he won’t be coming home with us. And I thought ‘oh, he’s coming home!’
“I probably didn’t know what depression was before that. The doctor said it to me, but I could just feel myself in a place I was never in before. And it just gave me strength, that’s why I’m here, because he [Alfie] definitely wasn’t coming home, even the doctors were shocked.
“I was just in a bad place, put my shoes on, and ran. And I got fit, and he got healthy. It definitely gave me strength, and I remembered then why I loved running, that it took you to a place that was different, and you had all those endorphins, you’re in a great place mentally, and physically obviously.”
As Alfie grew fit and strong again, so did McGlynn’s running career, starting exactly one year after his birth, in 2013: “I’d looked up Athletics Ireland races, the All-Ireland indoors were on his birthday, and I thought ‘maybe I’ll go there.
“So I tried the 3k, he was on the sideline, and I swear I was holding back the tears, was in a podium position. I think I was second or third. And that’s also when everyone copped that’s Ann-Marie Larkin! Because it was my first race back as Ann-Marie McGlynn.
“I got in under the radar, but sure after that everyone got wind of it, Frank Greally of Irish Runner had it, there was no hiding it.”
Now coached by Emmett Dunleavy, McGlynn had her days of days in last year’s Dublin Marathon, at age 43, finishing fifth-best woman and best of the Irish, with that also winning the national title she’d come so close to in her previous two attempts, in 2022, and 2019.
Peaking in her 40s is not usual. Mayo-born Sinead Diver, also a mother of two and now representing Australia, ran 2:21:34 at the 2022 Valencia Marathon, when (whisper it) she was just over two months shy of turning 46.
Heading into Sunday’s race, McGlynn is hopeful of defending her national title, conscious she’s also the marked woman now.
“When I was getting it [the national marathon cup] engraved I said to the guy, ‘I hope I’ll have that back to you next year’. I want to bring it back, don’t want to leave it. I won’t let it be the detriment of my race either.
“Like its 26.2 miles. You could be loving life at Roebuck, you get to the American Embassy you could be, ‘argh!’ It’s a long way around for anything to happen, so you just want to hope that your stars align on the day.”
Just like last year, actually.
