I arrived over to Cloghan at 10:00 as I was helping everyone get set up...we had the registration upstairs in our new clubhouse and PJ "Vander" Camon and Eddie Higgins had everything looking great...All entrants of the race received a goodie bag and a technical t-shirt...this was the 3rd year of the race and its organised each year by Paul Buckley from Ferbane Athletics Club who is from Cloghan and is well known in athletics circles throughout Ireland...he was helped on the day by his brother Neil who is also well know and who runs the Midlands Boxercise in various locations throughout the midland...with Cloghan and Tullamore being two of them...St Rynaghs Football Club would like to thank both lads especially for all the work they put in each year organising the race. The race went off without a hitch and it was well marshalled with enough water stations and hills for everyone to enjoy. Thanks to everyone who helped out with BBQ, Food, Registration, Marshalling, Guards, Lead Car etc...I don't want to start mentioning names in case I forget people but it was a success and we'll see you all again next year.
The winners of the race were
Senior Males
1. John Harking : Tullamore Harriers : 34:41
2. Paul Mitchell : Ferbane Athletics Club : 35:09
3. Jason Donegan : Tullamore Harriers : 35:16
Senior Females
1. Emma Kenny : 41:23
2. Carmel Condron : 46:27
3. Hillary O'Shea : 49:08
In relation to my own preparation for the Tullamore Half Marathon...we have 9 weeks of the 10 weeks completed and this was the last race before the half marathon next Saturday 31st August @ 12 noon...all information is available on the Tullamore Harriers website..http://www.tullamoreharriers.com .Since I was involved in helping to set things up etc I only got to start my warm up at 11:35...John O'Connell who has been training us for the last 9 weeks told us to wear the harriers blue and white singlet for the race today so we'd get used to it...Before we started the warm up I headed over to the car and put it on...this gave the Rynaghs lads in the club something to sneer me about and now I was a super blue etc etc but I was proud to wear it and off we headed around the field for a few laps...John Bennett joined us and we had a good chat doing the warm up...Then around 11:50 we gathered at the entrance to get ready to start walking up the Birr road to the top of the hill for the start of the race...Waiting in the car park and stewarding for the day Martin Hanamy (Offaly All Ireland Hurling Winning Captain 1994 and a great club man) asked me how I got the singlet and with a crowd around him I knew where this was going...I said that you have to be an athlete to get one of these and when the harriers club think you’re ready they present you with one...I thought it was a good reply but Hanamy said go on will ya...you can get them in Elvery’s in Tullamore and with the noise of laughter behind me I headed up the Birr road..
St Rynaghs is a great club that has a lot of history since Cloghan and Banagher who are both in the parish of Rynaghs joined together to play hurling and football in 1961. Since then Offaly has won the All Ireland Hurling 4 times and the captain of 3 of them teams were St Rynaghs Men...Padraig Horan in 81, Martin Hanamy in 1994 and Hubert Rigney in 1998....all these lads are still involved in the club and continue to coach players of all ages....Currently in Offaly there is only 3 clubs playing hurling and football at senior championship level. The 3 teams are St Rynaghs along with Tullamore and Ferbane/Belmont...it’s not easy trying to keep both games going at Senior level and the 3 clubs tend to suffer because of this with dual players having to play football one week and hurling the next...we've always promoted and encouraged the dual player and in Rynagh’s we would have a huge overlap of lads playing both games. In the modern game where the county dual player is almost dead and gone the club had 3 players who represented Offaly in senior championship hurling and football...these were Paudge Mulhare, Paudie Mulhare and Michael Duignan.
Anyway back to the run…got to the top of the Birr Road and Paul Buckley gave us a quick run through of the course and then we were off...The fastest I've ever run a 10K before was just over 57 minutes and today when I checked my times after 1 mile I had run it in 7:47..the quickest mile I've ever run but I said I needed to slow down as I wouldn't last the 10K running at this pace...ran the next 3 mile in 9:00 , 8:59 and 9:01..consistant pace and something John has drilled into Ciaran and myself over the last 9 weeks...I felt good after 4 mile or 6.5 KM so I pushed it on a bit and passed out a few people which was new to me over the last 2 mile..I ran mile 5 in 8:45 and mile 6 in 8:39 and finished the last .25 Mile or 400M at 8:06 pace...delighted with how the run went and completed it in 54:00 minutes...a huge improvement from my previous best 10K run. Ciaran had a PB as well and completed the run in 59:44 and under the hour which is a great milestone to reach and something that's not easy to do...he has all his info here….http://fatdadrun.blogspot.ie/2013/08/the-cloghan-10k.html
OK so 9 weeks completed now and only 6 more days to the half marathon and the challenge that both Ciaran and myself accepted back in the middle of June...next week we'll only be doing light training on both Tuesday and Thursday and I'll try and get a blog entry up on Friday before the run...until then...enjoy the photos from the run in Cloghan.
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