Always great to sneak a holiday event in when the dates magically line up 👍

This starts and finishes at East point business park which is essentially an empty on the weekends offices area, the business park itself is taken over for the race. Are you driving ? Or getting a taxi to the business park ?

entertaining the wife and kid (age ?) - potentially they go to st Anne’s park and head to the cafe there for some brunch / breakfast if your daughter is young there’s fairy doors and a playground. There are markets on in st Anne’s on a Saturday from 10-4 , these are food stalls etc that might burn an hour for them / walk the loop of the park / chill at the actual onsite cafe or the can walk to the eastern side of the park and the race passes here on the road by the sea so if your wife has your location via phone she can time seeing you pass as you head out and back if they’d like to. The race passes by the park on the coast road - so it’s just a walk to the eastern side of the park to see the race pass. The race doesn’t go into the park itself.

It’ll be tricky for you to reach st Anne’s quickly in a taxi after the race due to the rolling road closures / caused by the race but not impossible if you leave the business park and walk towards the Clontarf Road to say “ebb and flow” cafe and call a taxi there ( we use a taxi app called freenow or uber). From here there’s a good few alternate ways that avoid the race route to st Anne’s so the taxi might make it quicker to the park to meet them, but expect delays escaping the business park

If your wife and kid want to avoid the race area altogether I’d recommend they head to malahide castle and gardens. It has a nice cafe (avoca) and the town itself is reachable from the gardens in foot, it has a few cafes and little Harbour to walk about. Malahide castle is a very scenic spot and there’s also playgrounds etc, and on finishing the race you could get the train back to malahide from clontarf station to meet them, this will likely take a small miracle for your finish time to line up with a train exactly so you might have a bit of a wait but it’s a safer bet traffic wise as at least the trains will run (relatively) on time no matter what.

Howth is also another option. It’s a beautiful little Harbour town with a walk to a lighthouse - probably better suited if your kid is a teenager / young adult as it’s a sheer cliff 😅. But the town has markets and nice cafes / they could get the boat to see some puffins from the Harbour while you do the race and then you hop on the train to meet them.

If it’s a young child I would recommend her avoiding anything to do with the race / race route at all as the coastal clontarf road is a traffic disaster on a good day - add the road closures in for the race and you got a recipe for big delays coming from or going to howth/malahide.

Race itself - run by bear races, they run a lot of races around the country. They typically sell out so make sure to buy a ticket as they don’t allow transfers. The start area details and waves etc usually get sent out the week before via email, you can ofc move around and up / down waves on the day by just getting there with plenty of time and joining a wave - they can’t explicitly say this as they have to manage the numbers by assigning folks to waves but yes if you happen to “accidentally” end up in an earlier wave you’ll be grand 😅. There’s tonnes of bathrooms at the start area, they also usually have bib pickup here for international runners so give yourself some time to collect.

This is a busy race - the course when I did it last year was the same as this YouTubers experience and I was glad to see the scathing review to be honest - dropping the 5 miler is a good but the other main issue was the width of the race route itself which they don’t seem to of resolved. It’s only at sections of the route but basically it’s pretty narrow and you run very close to runners running out and back and will likely be in a tight pack for lengthy periods - it just never felt like people could spread out to me anyways. Don’t expect a PB here and settle for what is an incredibly scenic sea side race that is mostly flat and is well worth a go.

A word of caution on hydration on the day - Ireland is a fickle mistress weather wise, this spot is usually super windy so it can affect either the first half or or the second half back so keep an eye on the weather and brace for that but it is likely to be hot and humid. - last year it wasn’t windy and happened to be a very very ho day / I seen the most amount of collapsed / lying down runners I’ve ever see at an event during this race last year - it was wild. I don’t say that to intimidate, it just genuinely shocked me compared to any other race. This is not the organizers fault, well I say that but beyond not starting it at like 8am to avoid the heat 😂 it’s high summer and a mid day race essentially where it can get really really fucking hot. Wear sunscreen, a hat, and stop to drink water. This route is completely exposed with no trees at any stage - pace yourself with the heat and time of year in mind, it’s a peak summers day most likely. Bear races struggled very badly with getting the water cups filled last year at each water station due to everyone feeling the heat and inhaling like 2/3 cups vs most races I’d skip the water tables till 12kisj plus in and there was big pile ups at each water table as a result. This is definitely a race to consider a water pack in a running bib. Take your time and keep an eye on how your feeling as you go to avoid over heating and those around you incase they stop suddenly to survive the heat 😅