Best of the best
It has been one of the busiest and best years ever in the Connaught road racing calendar.  Both the Mayo and Galway race series are in full flight, and we had so many other great races in the county – Annaghdown, Headford, Streets, Connemarra, Athenry, national 10k, half marathons all over the place, etc.  Loughrea AC managed the impossible yesterday and managed to make their race stand out from the crowd.

I am sure the novelty factor of glorious weather was a big contributor, but people everywhere were bowled over by the atmosphere and quality all through from the kids race right through to the end.

The Seminar
Many of us attended the seminar on the night before and were duly entertained and awestruck by some of our running heroes.  Ian O'Riordan did an excellent job of chairing events, and the athletes were very entertaining and informative.  I think for many the star was Jim Hogan who told stories of training back in his day when men were men – 130 mile weeks on average – barefoot! and sessions including 30x400m in 64 seconds each(!!!).  Taking on the advice of all, we'll see how the standard of Galway running improves as we adhere to our new diet of lambs liver and chips and slop around the cold wet Galway roads in our bare feet 🙂

The Course
They managed to pick out an absolute gut churner of a course.  At no stage was this an easy run.  The start was absolutely mental (the leaders passing the 1 mile mark in about 4:19), and the hill at the end totally took it out of you.  For me it really was a race of two halves – my first two miles being over a full minute faster than my last two!!

Read on for more .. and the results!

The Race
Brian FARRELL from Sli Chulann led throughout, and finished well ahead in the end in 23:48.  Local supervet Gerry Ryan of GCH paced himself cleverly to come in second in 24:13 – an awesome run from Gerry who hasn't run much at all this year.  Rory Chesser from Ennis Track continued his rise by taking 3rd ahead of two former national champions Alan O'Shea and Paul McNamara respectively.

1st AND 3rd place for Craughwell
The Juvenille race was won by Craughwell's distance runner extrodinaire Linda Porter.  A great achievement – well done Linda!

A total of 20 happy Craughwell runners finished the Senior Race and Craughwell took 3rd team prize behind Mayo AC and GCH. A great result in a field of this quality.

Full results are here (PDF, Large).

Full Craughwell Results from the senior race were: