Davis clung on for dear life. He was glad of that drink he took at half way as his throat burned with thirst, the crowd yelling in his ears. "One last push and you're home" he thought as he made a burst up the hill, with Nevin breathing down his neck.   Finally with a last gasp kick he crossed the line, arms raised with relief and eyes welling up with pride.  Dazed he staggered up the chute as someone handed him a bag – excellent – crisps, a gold medal and wow a crazy frog sticker too! He turned around and congratulated his classmate Aoife Nevin close behind him, all smiles – what a race!

Much congratulations are due to the members of Loughrea AC who put on an exceptional weekend of athletics entertainment.  I made it to most of the seminar, and ran both the kids and the senior race and there was not a flaw to be found.  The seminar was excellent in my opinion even better than the one from last year despite the fact that attendance was lower.  James Nolan and Seamus Power are both personal heroes of mine so it was excellent to hear them tell honest stories of their training and give advice to the onlookers.  They are real contrasts – Nolan with his scientific methods and Power with his brutally hard-training old school approach.  Both waited around for the race itself on Sunday – Nolan coming up to myself and Jason the next day and chatting at length explaining more about his systems for pace calculation – while the great Power cheered the athletes from the 3 mile mark.  In addition to these two we of course had the great Olive Loughnane and top coach Rob Denmeade and sports psychologist Canice Kennedy.

The 5 mile race itself was my own first run back in many months so I was interested in seeing how much fitness I'd lost, but also focused on not injuring myself.  Johnny and Justin ran on ahead while Tony, Tommy and I formed a little Craughwell AC group that tried to help each other over the course.  I think it worked as we managed to pull enough of us home to take 2nd team prize.  It is a tough course and was as tough a race as I have ever ran!  It is a good sign that we can take a team prize while missing strong runners like Martin, Jason, Paddy and Peter among others!

The race results for the craughwell entrants are below:

Full results can be seen here:

http://www.athleticsloughrea.com/node/166

Special mention must go to Brendan Gallagher and Ronan Nevin of Craughwell AC who came first and 3rd respectively in the excellent Junior fun run. 

Adidas Dublin Half Marathon
Peter O'Sullivan ran a simply superb Dublin Half Marathon last weekend – finishing in 1:22 which bodes really well for his marathon attempt in 5 weeks.  This is a really great time on a very hard course.  I don't know if anyone else from the club ran this race but if so please post a comment.