Oranmore 5km

I was desperate to have a hit-out and this race was just down the road from work so thought I'd give it a go. The weather wasn't great - wet and blowy but I just wanted to try and run quickly again to see exactly where I'm at.

After registration I ran a 2.6km warm-up with Michael Shannon. This man races for fun and can post super-quick times on consecutive days (10km PB 31:01) so I wasn't expecting to give him much to worry about. We lined up with over 400 at the start and we were off. I sat in behind Michael for the first km but as soon as we hit a long drag in the second km I was going backwards. We were running directly into the wind which made it tough but I knew that once we reached the turnaround point at 2.5km, the run back to the start would be a lot easier.

At the turnaround I'd say I'd lost 15 seconds on Michael but I at least looked to have second place sewn up. With the wind on the back the pace immediately lifted and I started to feel a lot more comfortable. I pushed as hard as I could back to the finish but was making no inroads on the leader, Lots of support from the other runners who were passing the other way and I really enjoyed the run home crossing the line in 16:27 for second place. Michael ran 15:53 and I don't think he really got out of second gear!

That'll do - not a great time but it was a tough first half of the race, I hope to improve from here on in. A quick run back to the car to give me around 8.6kms for the day.

Here are the splits:

1km 3:14
2km 3:26
3km 3:25
4km 3:08
5km 3:14

Total 16:27

A great race and hopefully lots of money raised for the Alzheimer's association.

Here's a photo of me and Micheal at the start: