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A short three weeks after the Sixmilebridge Marathon, and Mick Rice and Ruthann Sheahan were out again this weekend to show the club the resilience of their muscles, with some great performances down in Clonakilty.

Ruthann ran a superb personal best, to the pride of her home town, Clonakilty!

Her tough Marathon des Sables regime, including early morning circuits and running with weights, is clearly paying dividends - having squeezed in an unofficial Marathon Club marathon distance run in Portumna also since the Sixmilebridge race (with another personal best; although unchipped) - just two weeks later she turned out a 4 minute PB with a finish of 3:24:25, on what Mick Rice proclaims as a 'brutally hilly' course - and coming from the King of Connemara, those are tough words indeed!

Mick, on the other hand, decided to take the scenic route towards his goal for the day.

In his blog he said: "I just can’t resist the urge to run hard just one more time before the end of the year. If I could duplicate my Sixmilebridge time I’d be more than happy. A stretch goal would be to get under 2:50…possible I suppose, but unlikely. The main goal is to have a little fun."

Fun he had, indeed - somehow Mick managed to miss the official marathon start, and with the half marathon, 10km and marathons all going off together, he had to gallop through nearly 2000 runners to make up time. He said ruefully afterwards that he would have made his 2:50 time goal if he'd got off at the right start time.

There appeared to be a quite a bit of starting line confusion, based on comments on the results page.

http://corkrunning.blogspot.com/2011/12/results-of-clonakilty-half-and-full.html

He managed a great recuperation, starting line debacle notwithstanding, and scrambled his way through the crowd to take sixth place overall, and second M45 (overall he had fourth fastest chip time and fastest M45 chip time).

New to marathon running was local triathlete and club member Aonghus McGuinness, who had a fine marathon debut, with an excellent finish time of 3:45:24 chip time.

Bridget Ann Walsh was the final club member to compete; one of the original Connemara half marathon veterans, she finished in 4:47:22 (pictured above with Ruthann).

Race results are attached below.

I'm not aware of anyone doing the half marathon and there are no club listing so can't check but if there are any club results for half marathon, please let me know.

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