Things don’t always go as planned. Two years ago, when I was 38, I ran down the ramp at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and crossed the marathon finish line in just under four hours. Perfect, I thought. Two more years, and I’ll be 40 and in prime condition to finally qualify for the Boston Marathon.

But that was then. Now, as my Aer Lingus flight taxied toward the gate in Dublin, Ireland, things had changed. I was now 40 and still had my Boston Marathon dreams but qualifying in Dublin wasn’t on my mind.

A few months after that big race in Canada, I crashed a snowmobile into a tree in Montana. I woke up in a hospital (in Idaho) with a bunch of broken bones and a wired-shut jaw. Dublin would be the grand return to marathoning for me and for my friend Karen; we train separately in Southern and Northern California respectively, and we’ve been using these races as an excuse to travel together every fall since 2005 when we’d toed the line in Chicago.

Exploring Ireland

I dropped my bags at the Trinity Capital Hotel then headed out again to meet Karen at the Bank on College Green. The Victorian-style spot, with its ornate mosaic floor and stained glass ceiling, was built as a branch of the Belfast Bank in the late 19th Century.

It’s now a restaurant and a gorgeous place to launch a vacation. I ordered the salad Nicoise and, since I was in Ireland and it had taken me a long time to get here, paired it with a Guinness. The day was nearly done by the time we were finished eating. We had just enough time to cross the River Liffey and visit the Dublin Writers Museum on Parnell Square.

To get there we followed O’Connell Street, reportedly the widest street in Europe. Its most prominent feature is an enormous (390-plus-foot) stainless-steel spire called the Monument of Light, which rises from the center of the street at its intersection with Henry Street.

It was erected for the millennium, but this intersection’s history goes much further back. The General Post Office, located on the southwest corner, was the nationalist headquarters for 1916’s Easter Rising. Although most of the building was destroyed and rebuilt, the original bullet-holed columns remain.

The Dublin Writers Museum is impressive on the exterior— housed in a Georgian mansion that was once the home of the Jameson family (of whiskey fame). What’s behind the walls, too, is impressive, although the exhibits could have been more compellingly presented. I still got a thrill seeing a first edition of Dracula and James Joyce’s typewriter.

That night we spent a couple of hours walking around the Trinity College and Temple Bar areas, neighborhoods full of welcoming pubs, restaurants and shops. Lured by the live traditional music, we popped into O’Donoghue’s, a pub I’d first visited on the tip of a cab driver seven years ago.

We stayed at the very crowded main bar just long enough to order our drinks, then retreated to the more open patio area where we quaffed our pints and admired the Halloween costumes (it was October 29) of the fellow patrons. We recognized a female Freddy Krueger, a gladiator with painted-on abs, some Lego people and the Invisible Man.

Running the Marathon

When we awoke the next morning, this trip became all about the marathon. With 24 hours to go, we began what turned out to be a time-consuming journey to pick up our race numbers at the Royal Dublin Society. After three packed buses failed to stop for any new passengers, we took a walk to the Dublin Area Rapid Transit station, only to find out that the subway line we needed wasn’t running at all due to flooding from recent storms.

Picking out a couple of people at the next bus stop who looked like runners themselves, we talked them into sharing a cab. From Northern Ireland, they turned out to be a valuable resource as one of them  had taken three previous trips around the Dublin Marathon course.

We had an early carbo-loaded dinner at Carluccio’s, a cozy Italian spot. It turned out to be an England-based chain, but we had no complaints about the toothsome noodles and delectable sea salt-topped focaccia bread.

For a destination marathon many time zones away, Dublin has some great selling points, including a late starting time. Instead of the typical 6 to 8 a.m. window, Dublin’s elite racers didn’t hit the pavement until 9:50 a.m.

After a long night’s sleep and a leisurely breakfast, I wasn’t feeling jet lagged. The weather when they launched my sub -elite running group at 9:55 a.m. was ideal—overcast and mid-50s.

Anxiety-free first miles. The first few miles of any big marathon (and this one qualifies with about 14,000 participants) can be tough as you try to find enough open road to establish your race pace. Too-slow early miles can leave you with a lot of ground to make up when you’re tired. Knowing I wouldn’t be setting any land-speed records that day, I dodged the crowd as best I could without obsessively checking my watch.

The experience. After every race, Karen and I compare notes, and hers are always more detailed than mine. I tend to get hyper-focused on meeting my time goal, and I always seem to miss out on the scenery. But not that day. We ran around pretty St. Stephens Green, down residential streets lined with cheering spectators (like a scene from the Tour de France) and circled four miles of grand Phoenix Park.

For about a mile I even kept up the conversation started by a fellow American, a man from New Jersey who was running his second marathon in as many weekends (he’d done Venice the week before). With about five miles left to go, he dropped back after giving me a great compliment and just the motivation I needed: “You’re too fast for me.” I crossed the line in four hours and 31 minutes under a very dark sky that had finally let down the pouring rain.

It wasn’t my slowest race time—that distinction goes to my first marathon in Los Angeles, but I’d failed for the first time since 2005 to break that four-hour barrier. That’s what rebuilding years are all about.

I hadn’t realized the best part of cruising through a marathon until the next day when I woke up just mildly sore instead of stiff as a board and useless.

Karen and I packed our bags and headed for the airport. We were on our way to Stockholm (for sightseeing). We didn’t run a single mile.