Good idea to take part in 5 mile, 10 mile and half Marathon?

It's a very good idea. The shorter races along the way will give you a good idea of your progress along the way, and they can help to keep the motivation up.

Plus I think it's cheaper to register for all 3 of them at once, €45 if I remember correctly.

Hi Niamh,

I think it is a great idea. I did the same thing last year. Great practice - you get used to the race environment.

I pretty much started running around this time last year. 4 of us entered a relay team for the Cork City Marathon on June Bank Holiday weekend (I would recommend this) - then the seed was sown. I did the 5 miler, 10 miler and 13 miler that summer.

The only thing I will say about the 13 miler on 26th September is that it is very close to the Dublin Marathon - 4 weeks or so, with 2 weeks of this likely to be a "tapering" period. So, you'd need to be able to do more than the 13 miles (probably around 18 miles anyhow) at that stage of your training.

I did the Longford Half Marathon last year:
http://www.longfordmarathon.com/
Its on the 30th August this year. Course is relatively flat. I found that this put me in a better position to be comfortable in the full marathon last year. Yes, it is just 2 weeks after the 10 miler, but moving from 10 to 13 miles in 2 weeks is a hell of a lot easier than from 13 to 26 miles in 4 weeks.

Another alternative is the Dingle Half Marathon (think its the first year of this):
http://www.dinglemarathon.ie/
on 12th September. Dont really know too much about this, but again, there is more time before the Dublin Marathon.

You could do the Dublin Half Marathon aswell on 26th Sept as practice.

best of luck with it. I'll be doing the 5 miler anyhow, and hoping to do the Dublin Marathon aswell.