In 1980, a teenage Martin Kelly joined 1,421 other athletes for the inaugural Dublin City marathon.
Closing in on 944 miles and 37 years later, the Raheny Shamrock runner is among a select band to have run every edition of the race.
In total, 13 athletes this year hold the distinction, and the youngest of those, 55-year-old Kelly, fondly remembers the first edition of the race, a different era for running in Ireland.
"When I used to run from home, you’d nearly be hiding yourself for the first half a mile so people didn’t recognise you," he recollects.
Golf was his number one sporting passion growing up - "team sports at the weekend often got in the way" - and got his first taste of athletics at school.
Primarily used as a means for keeping fit, his ability quickly shone through among his peers. When talk of a Dublin marathon turned into reality, he was keen to put his three or four days a week training to the test.
Distance aside, the very first marathon bore little resemblance to the 20,000 sell-out event of today.
The then 17-year-old required his mother’s signature for entry - "she thought I was racing a five miler" – and decided to throw caution to the wind.
As for predicted times, there was little expectation in what was his first crack at the gruelling event.
A large display clock en route with less than a quarter left of the race was his first and last sighting of a time before crossing the line.
"The start was a free for all," he recalls. "There were no chips and the start was quite wide. It may well have taken a few minutes to get through the start, but that was still your time."
Kelly finished just over an hour behind race winner and Irish Olympian Dick Hooper – now a club-mate at Raheny Shamrock – in a time of three hours and 12 minutes.
A year later and he broke the three-hour barrier for the first and only time, a time of two hours and 47 minutes placing him in the top four per cent of the field.
Since then the years have all blended together and few stick out more than others, aside perhaps from 1994, where he picked up a knock during the race.
A policy of walk-a-mile, run-a-mile helped see him over the line, the only occasion he has gone past the fourth hour on the big day.
In total he has spent more than 130 hours on the various Dublin routes covering the 944 miles (1512km) since 1980 and has been a model of consistency time-wise.
Less than four minutes separate his last three finishing times, while three hours 36 minutes is his average time over the unbroken sequence.
Over 36 years, he has averaged 8:16 per mile pace (05:08 per km).
"There were a couple of years in the middle where I thought, ‘Do I really want to do this?’, but I had done 12 or 13 at that stage. I wanted to get to 15, then 20 and so on."
Luckily he has never picked up illness or injury in the lead-in to the October Bank Holiday weekend and credits his decision to join a running club – in his case Raheny Shamrock – for giving him a new lease of life.
While he was never seriously considering quitting the marathon, the focus just wasn't quite the same.
"I needed something for my motivation. Now I find it very hard now to run on my own. There is coaching at the club if you want it, and there’s also great camaraderie and competition."
He can count on both hands the other marathons he has run besides Dublin – "I’d like to do New York one year" - and is happy with his preparation for the Sunday's race.
The experienced runner is also living proof of improving with age; he was three-and-a-half hours faster doing his last 10 marathons than he was doing his first 10.
Joining Martin in continuing his ever-present record at the marathon will be Frank Behan (the oldest of the group at 76), Michael Carolan, Seamus Cawley, Donal de Buitleir, Seamus Dunne, Dominic Gallagher, Patrick Gowen, Billy Harper, John McElhinney, Peadar Nugent, Donal Ward and Mary Nolan-Hickey.
