Our esteemed comrades Ray and Johnny O'Connor completed yesterday's ING New York City Marathon in fine style. Johnny lined up for this race with perhaps his best ever months of training behind him, while Ray had only run the Dublin City Marathon six day's previously.

As it turned out both Athenry runners made it home in highly respectable times. Johnny struck out initially at a cracking pace passing the 10K point in under 45 minutes. He maintained this pace past the halfway mark, which he saw with only 1:36:07 on the clock. Although the 'wheels' didn't come off in the second half of Johnny's race they must have run a bit short on oil as it took a slightly slower 2:01 for him to cover the second half of the famous New York Course. He finished with a highly commendable time of 3:37:58.

His older, if not wiser, brother Ray ran his usual well-paced race. He passed the halfway split with 1:54:43 on the clock and came home well under four hours. His eventual finish time of 3:58:49 placed him in the top 25% of runners. This was Ray's sixth marathon this year (Belfast, London, Longford, Edinburgh, Dublin, New York) and I'm sure he's now looking forward to a well-earned rest.