Cork is the largest half-marathon in Ireland for the first half of 2024...

The 2024 Cork City Half-Marathon was the largest half-marathon in Ireland for the first six months of the year.

The chart above shows the half-marathons with over 1000 finishers and Cork is in first place with 3500. The Great Limerick Run Half-Marathon is just behind with 3277 finishers. 

The only other half-marathons in Munster that broke the 1000 mark are the Waterford Viking Half-Marathon with 1224 finishers and the Run Killarney Half-Marathon with 1151 finishers.

There were at least 53 half-marathons in Ireland for the first half of 2024 and the distribution is shown above. As can be seen, most have reasonably small numbers with 30 of the 53 with fewer than 300 finishers. 15 of those had less than 120 finishers which would have meant a lot of big gaps between the runners.

Cork V Limerick... I thought it was a little surprising how relatively close the Limerick numbers were to Cork considering that the population for Cork City is over twice that of Limerick city.

The chart above shows the numbers for the Cork and Limerick half-marathons since 2013.

From 2013 to 2015, the numbers for both events were pretty similar despite the difference in population. After 2016, Cork began to pull away as the number of finishers grew.

It was only in 2024 that Limerick has begun to close the gap again.

The second half of 2024... One of the most important and biggest running events in Ireland is of course the Dublin marathon and many people use a half-marathon race as part of the build up to it.

There are plenty more big half-marathons coming down the line and it'll be interesting to see how Cork and Limerick fare by comparison by the end of the year.