After a day of solid rain, the skies cleared as Gerry Ryan proved his class once again in winning the 2007 streets of Galway, running away from a field containing some of the finest runners in the country.  Ryan who is at least 43 and probably tending towards 44 years old came home 8 seconds clear of Kilkenny's Brian Maher with most people's pre-race favourite national 10k track champion Gary Thornton close behind in third.

I was running the race myself, but I saw Thornton move to a big early lead as he probably sought to push the race from the front as he did in the national 10k track finals.  However, spectators who saw the finish commented that Ryan looked relaxed and comfortable in the home straight, whereas the athletes behind him were suffering visibly.

Gerry's time of 23:59 is the second slowest  recorded winning time in the race's history but still a very good time by modern Irish road-running standards.  He was more than a minute slower than Seamus Power's course record which shows how truly great a record that is.  Gerry has now already won the two biggest open events of the year in the Irish Runner 5-miler and the Streets of Galway.  He expressed an interest in running the remainder of the Irish Runner race series (10 miler and 1/2 marathon) and based on this form not many would bet against this incredibly talented competitor adding to his 2007 haul with one or both of these major titles.

Another experienced Ryan, Rosmary this time dominated the womens race coming home in a great time of 26:34.  Rosmany was running near myself for about half of the race but injected a fast 4th and 5th k to stretch a good lead and ran much of the race without company after that.  It was well short of her course record time of 26:01 from 2001, but still a superb time.

It was a good race for Craughwell AC too.  New member Martin Corcoran was first home for the club, taking second place in the over 40 category with an excellent time of 26:41.  Martin was 20th runner overall and is a very welcome and talented addition to the club.  Well done Martin!

Well done to the members of the club who ran yesterday – we had a lower representation than I would have liked, but the Craughwell results from the first 600 entrants are below:

Some other folk who are Craughwell runners ran for their companies on the day – apologies if I missed you but I just searched by team name… and you should be running for Craughwell anyhow!!!