They inverted the course direction and the weather pattern inverted from the last few days– instead of starting sunny and raining in the afternoon; it started foggy and the sun eventually shone through. Athenry AC had another great day out at the impeccably organised second Craughwell AC 10 mile road race on Sunday. A fantastic 46 participants from the club turned out in maroon and white. With some record breaking performances from the top men and women, and a much larger race entry than last year, the club had to fight for its place in the prizes, but both the men and women’s teams took silver medals in the AAI county championships; the men matching their previous year’s tally of silver medals and the women fighting their way into second place despite some key club members from the previous year’s gold medal stash being missing.

Brian O’Connor, Mick Rice, Brian Bruton and Darragh McShane led the men’s team home in fine form, the first three finishing under the hour mark and picking up the smart and coveted top 25 t-shirts; Darragh was close behind at 1:02. Brian O’Connor took bronze medal in the AAI championships with an excellent time of 57:36. Tony Killarney had a fine race, taking gold in the M50 category of the AAI championships with a time of 1:08. Martin Keane faced stiff (and younger!) competition but held out strongly to take bronze in the M60 category.

The women’s team was led home by Aoife Callan, who has been showing excellent racing form of late, in a great time of 1:12. She was followed by Deirdre Hassett, Deirdre Quinn (who just missed a top 25 shirt, finishing in 26th place in the women’s race) and Miriam Wall, who made up the scorers for the AAI championships silver medals. Club chairman Maeve Noone followed close behind, in a new 10 mile PB of 1:17:39.

Valerie Glavin showed great recovery from her exploits in Helsinki by running to Craughwell then executing a nice 1:35 race while pacing the delighted Marie Curran to a new PB (report to follow!) before running home, in preparation for her next outing at the Connemara ultramarathon in April.

Well done to all club members who took part. Athenry shirts were in evidence everywhere on the day, both running and partaking of the excellent refreshments afterwards – a super turnout to support our neighbours, who held a tightly organised, well executed and great value race.

Didn’t it seem a lot hillier running in the opposite direction, though, or was that just me?

The Craughwell full results can be found here:

http://www.craughwellac.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=808&Itemid=70

Also – see attached files.