This was the first year that the national 10k was incorporated into the BUPA run and there were mixed feelings about it from the runners I spoke to.  Some runners don't like the idea of all the national championships moving up to dublin and dealing with crowds, etc, while others like the sense of occasion around the event.  I have to confess that I enjoyed the mixing of the two events and think it's a positive thing for the sport.

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A huge crowd of 11,000 ran the event and there were a huge amount of familiar faces from Galway and the West in Phoenix Park.  The phoenix is a bird that rose from the ashes but in this case the ashes won and many of the top europeans were kept away from the event by the icelandic volcanoe.  The highest Galway finisher was Gary Thornton who ran an exceptional race to finish within seconds of professional athlete and winner Martin Fagan.   When you compare Gary's training environment with Fagan's you'd have to say that this was just awesome.  Congratulations to him from all at Craughwell AC – he just keeps getting better and better.

Not far behind him and top finisher for Craughwell was new member Gerry Ryan who blitzed around in 31:08.  Gerry finished in the top 10 which is amazing for a man of 46 years of age.  Afterwards Gerry didn't seem too thrilled with his time on this tough course but to put it in perspective as far as I can tell only 17 men over 45 in the world have ever ran faster for 10k (check out the list here).  Gerry easily won the M45 category and Martin Corcoran was close to an individual medal himself coming 5th.  I am sure that Gerry will push himself further up that all time list as the year goes on.

The official results aren't out yet but I think that we did enough to take the Vets prize which if confirmed will be the first Gold medal that the senior team have won. Fingers crossed but our average time of 33:14 should be enough to seal it.  Fantastic stuff.  Results for the Craughwell athletes are below and you can watch the event on RTE player for the next 20 days or so up here.  Looking foward to watching it myself tonight.