Record breaking Abbott Longford Marathon

Hundreds of people lined the streets of Longford Town last Sunday to cheer on the participants in 2024 Abbott Longford Marathon. The Marathon sold out all of the places available to racers for the first time since they started in 2003.

“It was record-breaking, the biggest entry ever,” Fiona Fenelon of the organising committee told the Leader on Monday afternoon, “We had over 1,300 people registered for the marathon at the weekend.”
One aspect of this year's event that impressed the race coordinators was the distance people travelled to run: “We had over 10 countries represented. There are lots of tourists coming to Longford specifically for the race, which is really cool.”

The appeal of the Abbott Longford Marathon appears to be growing: “I guess more people are running and we've improved our race over the years. Our runners like that we have a safe route with lots of stewards and Gardaí. It's become very sophisticated, a lot of planning goes into the event. We had over 30 guards out on race duty yesterday and they are supporting a great team of marshals at every junction point,” Fiona said.

Ticketing for the marathon was coordinated through Eventmaster. This is a fully integrated ticketing, fundraising and membership platform. This allowed runners to nominate a charity partner before the race and raise funds for them.
John Sheehan of the organising committee said this attracted a lot of new runners: “A group of runners from Athlone were raising funds on behalf of Aisling Brill for Brain Tumour Ireland. Aisling passed away from a brain tumour earlier this year. They had forty runners in different races and raised €16,640 for brain tumour research.”

The Abbott Longford Marathon has been steadily growing over the last two decades,
Fiona says this is a lot to do with repeat participants: “It's mostly down to word of mouth, like a lot of word of mouth. Good news travels. A lot of athletics club members spread the word, because we have great goody bags, fabulous t-shirts, fabulous medals, and a safe course.

“We got a great lift from our social media from Lyndsay Considine of LC Digital. She was amazing. We've had really good content since last April. And that definitely paid off,” she concluded.