Claregalway 10km

The rain had just about stopped before the race started. I had run a short-ish warm-up of about a mile as I was running a bit late. A crowd of around 200 at the start including Michael Shannon and Jason Broderick who is returning to great form after a couple of years in the wilderness.

At 6pm we were underway - starting from the school which you can see from our kitchen window (where the kids were both waving away!). I hit the front with Jason and Michael tucked in behind me. I continued to lead until about 1km when Jason also joined me and we continued to run side-by-side. That's how it remained for the next few kms and at 3km I tried a little surge just to see how the others would respond. It was captured nicely in this photo:

By the time we'd hit 4km, Jason had fallen off the back of the group leaving me and Michael running together. As mentioned previously, this is one of my favourite training loops and I know it very well so I hugged the racing line as best I could. At 5km I had a quick look at the watch and with a split of 16:19 (quicker than than Wedneday's 5km) I was thinking that a sub 33 was definitely on the cards.

I knew that at any time Michael was going to put in a surge but the kms continued to tick by and there was no move from him. At 7km we made a left hand turn onto the main road for the long run back into the village. This part of the run was a lot tougher as we were now running into the breeze and I switched to running from the path to the bus lane as that felt more comfortable. That said, I knew the pace had slowed.

By the time we had reached the church in the village we were still together but I knew that at any moment Michael was going to pull the trigger and I'd have nothing in response. Sure enough, after rounding the church, and then back past the school, Michael dropped the hammer and the last 500m I watched as he disappeared up the road! I enjoyed the run down the finishing chute crossing the line in a time of 33:16 for second place.

Pleased with the run - a much improved performance compared to Wednesday. I think I've lost a bit of speed endurance as the last few kms were tough but that's something I can work on. I'm just happy to be back racing again and turning in some half decent performances.

All up 14.8kms with a couple of miles warm-down with Michael, Jason and Brian. Then back home for some Thai fish cakes and a few beers.

Here are the splits:

1km 3:11
2km 3:17
3km 3:16
4km 3:16
5km 3:19 (16:19)
6km 3:24
7km 3:27
8km 3:25
9km 3:27
10km 3:14 (16:57)

Total 33:16