Thoroughbred Run Kildare Marathon

The Thoroughbred Run Kildare is an annual road race held every Father's Day in Kildare Town, County Kildare, on Ireland's flat horse-racing plain. Now in its 13th-plus year, the event offers four distances -- 5K, 10K, Half Marathon, and Marathon -- all starting and finishing in Kildare Town and routed through the Irish National Stud, home to some of Ireland's most celebrated thoroughbred sires. The Half Marathon extends further into the surrounding stud farms for a longer tour of the region's horse country, while the Marathon (42.2 km) traces the full course past paddocks, stud walls, and the wide training gallops that give the event its name. Every finisher receives a specially designed medal, with a new design revealed each year. The 2026 edition ran on Sunday, 21 June, drawing roughly 1,300 finishers across all four distances. With no break in the race's annual cadence, the next edition is projected for Father's Day, 20 June 2027, though the organisers, Just Runs Events, had not yet opened registration or published entry fees for that date. Recent editions have used rolling wave starts by predicted finish time, with the Marathon starting earliest in the morning and the shorter distances following through mid-morning.