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There's something special about this race. It’s my favourite race and as I sat near the finish area, completely exhausted, I was already looking forward to next year’s race and getting another shot at this course.

The conditions on Sunday were very good and unusually for Ballycotton, there was no wind! A few miles warm-up and then off up through the village to the start area. I got a much better start this year and off we went down the hill. Passed mile 1 in 5:35 with mile 2 in 5:37 and by then I'd settled into the pace and was running with a small group, feeling reasonably good. A stitch in my side made miles 4 and 5 a good deal less enjoyable than they might have been, but I still made it to half-way in 28:38, which was exactly what I had hoped for.

Unfortunately, I knew the second half was going be very hard and through mile 6, my legs began to fade. I fell off the back of the group I was in and although my pace was still around 5:50, I was barely hanging on. Got to mile 7 and all I wanted to do was to get to the finish inside 60 mins. Things got worse as my pace dropped back to 5:57 for mile 8 and then 6:11 for mile 9. My legs felt like I was running the last few miles of a marathon. Joined a little group including the women’s leader through mile 8 and then remarkably, I was able to increase my pace going into the last mile. I just wanted this race to be over and at that stage I didn't care what my time was.

I've always liked this last mile in Ballycotton and last year I flew up through the village in 5:31! Not at all enjoyable this year but at least it was nearly over. Two guys passed me with 1km to go and frankly, I didn't care, but subconsciously I must have, because with 100 metres to go I was still with them. I moved away from them and seeing the clock around 58:15, pushed all the way to the line to try and get home inside 58:30.

My finishing time was 58:28 in 67th place, with a second half time of 29:45. So I managed a PB by almost a minute and was delighted to get my third top-100 shirt (although, for some reason, instead of the technical tops last year or the Nike ones the year before, this year's shirts were very ordinary white cotton ones). Pretty good result then, considering that in the 11 weeks leading up to the race, I had managed only one run longer than 10 miles! (That’s mad, I know, but it was outside of my control because of various set-backs!)

So I'll have to wait 12 months to try again......I can't wait!

Conor Dolan

P.S. With the Craughwell 10 now in its second year, there wasn't as many Athenry singlets in Ballycotton, but the following members ran on Sunday:

Lyall Guiney 1:02:16

Johnny O'Connor 1:02:51

Ray Somers 1:04:19

Aoife Callan 1:13:19

Club President, Martin Keane 1:23:06

Bridget Kissane 1:26:31