Old Head Beach Westport
Each year in August a small group of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers organise a half-marathon race along the County Mayo coastline between the picturesque village of Louisburg and the neighboring town of Westport. The race is held in order to raise funds for the National Childrenās Hospital in Crumlin. The route taken by runners hugs the coastline along Clew Bay and is, in my humble opinion at least, the most scenic half marathon course in the country with the possible sole exception of the Connemara Half Marathon. For a city slicker like me this place is fairly close to running heaven.
Six Athenry AC members made the trip this year to take part in this race. I had traveled up from Athenry with clubmates Peter and Seb on race morning and we met Ray at registration. Two new Athenry AC members, Evie and Treasa, who have come to the club through the Predator Triathlon Club, made up our full compliment on the day.
This is a reasonably low-key event and the majority of people taking part do so with the aim of completing the distance and then thereās a smaller group of people who race the distance competitively. I for one certainly intended to run as hard and as fast as I could. I had been training fairly hard over the summer for another in race early September and I wanted to run hard this time in order to gauge my fitness.
Having been bussed over to the race start in Louisburg, Peter, Seb and I warmed up gently on a small back road. I was unusually tense and a bit agitated at this stage. I reckoned I was fairly fit and I was quite keen to run well. In recent weeks I had been training well but hadnāt had the chance to race. I was hopeful that Iād be able to better my previous best time for the distance, which I had set almost exactly two years previously at 1:19:42. I reckoned that if all went well I could hope to finish in the top half dozen finishers or thereabouts. A quick look around at the start revealed that many of the faster local runners hadnāt shown up. I was sure however that there were probably a few speedsters around that I just didnāt recognise. One of the best road races in the country, the āStreets of Galway 8Kā, would be taking place that evening and many runners were doubtless targeting that prestigious event.
We lined up at the appointed hour, wished each other well for the challenge ahead and with the minimum of fuss we were on our way back towards Westport. Within a few strides I was into unfamiliar territory as I was part of a small group of runners that immediately separated itself from the remainder of the field. There seemed to be about five or six runners padding determinedly along at the front. There was myself, my club mate Peter, a local triathlete Dave, the lead woman and a few other men none of whom I could recognise for the moment. We seemed to be clipping along nicely but without going any sort of suicidal pace. I donāt have a record of my mile splits to hand at the moment but from memory we went through the first mile in about 5:45. The actual lead changed a few times. I spent the first short while at the head of affairs with Dave and Peter also taking turns at the sharp end. After the first mile or so the lead woman seemed to fall off the pace that we were setting and I didnāt see her again after that until the finish of the race.
All was going to plan, in as much as I had one, as we were on a reasonably ambitious pace and the conditions seemed likely to allow for a true run race. As the course is āpoint-to-pointā, there had always been the chance of either a strong headwind or tailwind that might affect times significantly. While we seemed destined to run into a slight headwind all the way to the finish it wasnāt that strong. After an initial downhill section in the first mile the course settled into a series of gentle undulations. There were very few flat or straight sections of road but no really steep climbs or sharp turn either. All I wanted to do in the early miles was to maintain a good rhythm and hope that the miles would click by without too much incident.
Thankfully, although I was working reasonably hard to be able to stay with the lead group, I wasnāt distressed in any way and was therefore quite happy during these early miles. We maintained a pace of roughly 5:45 and 5:50 per mile. After about three or four miles, two athletes whom I didnāt recognise moved decisively into the lead. I had feared initially that they might move strongly ahead of the pack, and if they had I would not have been able to follow, but thankfully they continued at the head of affairs at much the same pace as we had been setting previously. Dave, Peter and I tucked in behind and let them do some of the work breaking the headwind. We passed the five-mile marker with about twenty-nine minutes on the clock and it was around about here that Peter seemed to fade off the pace a bit. It was only after the race that I learnt that he had fallen victim to a severe side stitch, which had forced him to a complete stop by the side of the road. He got going again soon afterwards but had unfortunately lost valuable time in the process.
As I had deliberately chosen not to look backwards at any stage in the race Iām unsure of where precisely Dave fell off the ābackā, but it was during miles five or six somewhere. Although I became aware at some point that I could no longer hear his footsteps behind me, I knew he wouldnāt be two far back. Dave is a fine all around athlete and a very strong runner. I knew that even if he found the pace a fraction too strong in the early stages that heād have the experience and determination to hang on like grim death. The lead group was now down to three as far as I could tell. The two chaps who had surged into the lead a mile or two earlier were still running strongly at the front of affairs and I was starting to cling on to the pace a little as the early miles started to extract their price in tired and sore legs.
I guessed, correctly as it turned out later, that these two leaders knew each other well. They had some friends and supporters along the course who cheered them on and offered drinks and encouragement. To their great credit they offered to share their drinks with me on each occasion but as I was running right on my limit I declined as gracefully as I could given the conditions. I tried to quietly feed off their energy and strength as they pushed confidently into miles six, seven and eight. I found this section tough and each gentle rise in the road seemed more difficult to deal with that the one which had come before. I gave little attention to the passing scenery and concentrated instead on just maintaining contact with the two front-runners. It was getting harder and harder.
I was quite surprised when three became two when one of the leading duo suddenly disappeared from the radar screen. Apparently he had decided to retire from the race and took a lift from some friends who had been following the race in their car. He told me afterwards that he didnāt believe he had sufficient training done to keep the pace going and so decided to save his energies for another day. This was getting interesting. Although I was myself beginning to really struggle to keep in touch, I wasnāt absolutely flat to the boards yet and I was running in second place. The leader, whom I found out afterwards was called Joe, didnāt seem to react in any way to his friends departure and to my worried eyes seemed to be running very smoothly. On each incline he moved a few yards ahead of me and it took every ounce of commitment I possessed to claw my way back onto his heels each time. This process seemed to repeat itself over and over again and the middle miles clicked slowly by.
The eight-mile marker was at the base of another small incline, the sort you might not even notice during a training run. I braced myself once again for the inevitable struggle to hang onto Joeās slipstream as the rising ground approached. To my surprise as the road rose I pulled level with the leader and without having to ādig inā like before it was him that seemed to drift slowly backwards. Instinct told me that this was a chance to test the waters with a little extra effort. I pushed just a smidgen harder up that small hill and within a couple of hundred yards Joe had fallen back out of earshot. I couldnāt believe my luck. Gaining that few yards gave me a real lift and I concentrated on maintaining a good tempo. I wasnāt in any way confident that I would stay ahead for the rest of the race but I wanted to make sure that Joe, or anyone else for that matter, would have to work real hard to make it back up towards me.
The next two miles are a bit of a blur in my memory now. The excitement of being in the unfamiliar position of leading a race was mixed up with the dread of falling apart before the finish line, or just being caught by fast finishing runners. I refused to look back, a lesson that Peter had taught me before. It all boiled down now to a frenzied charge towards Westport and the safety of the finish line. As I turned a corner just after the ten-mile point a race steward called out his support. Clapping his hands and urging me on he told me how well I was going and then assured me that I had, āā¦at least 100 yards on himā¦ā My spirits sank. I donāt know why but I had imagined Joe was further back than that and 100 yards didnāt sound like much at the time. I still wouldnāt look back. I just didnāt want to see anyone that close. My mile split for mile 10 was 6:06, my slowest of the race that far.
I suppose I should also explain one more thing at this point and that is that Iāve never won a race of any sort in my life. By this I donāt mean that Iāve rarely won races or that I havenāt won one since childhood, I mean exactly what I say ā that Iāve never ever been first past the post ā not even once, not even close. The combined result of the mile ten split and the race stewardās āencouragementā was to administer a huge kick up the arse to yours truly. I decided that if Joe was going to bridge that 100-yard gap then I was going to make him hurt as much as I could while he was doing it. I dredged up whatever little energy I hadnāt already thrown at the Louisburg to Westport road and flailed my way towards the finishing line.
It was only deep within the final mile of the race and at the end of a long curving section of road that I allowed myself the luxury of a backwards glance. With a clear view of the preceding quarter mile or so I could see that I had pulled well ahead of Joe. With tremendous relief I ran out the remaining short section of the course and passed gratefully by the time recorder to win my first race ever. As my mother used to say, āWhatās seldom is wonderfulā. The time on the clock was 1:16:44, a personal best by almost three minutes. It wasnāt the Olympics or even the strongest local race Iāll ever run but I was happy. Joe finished running strongly less than a minute after myself and was the first to shake my hand. In his turn Dave the triathlete came over the line in third place. Although Dave had fallen back from the lead early in the race he lost very little time on us in the remaining miles.
Just a few minutes later Peter arrived in fifth position (1:20:22). As is typically of his unselfish nature his first words were to enquire as to how I had done. I think he was nearly more pleased that I had won than I was myself. Had not Peter been affected with such a bad stitch in the early miles he would surely have figured prominently in the final shake-up. Seb continued his strong return from serious injury completing the course in 1:49:00. Seb went on to complete an Ironman Triathlon only a week later which only goes to prove that heās absolutely nuts as well as a fine athlete. Evie and Treasa crossed the line together in 2:13:40 which was in itself an impressive performance given that they had only started training about eight weeks previously.
On the way home from the race Seb, Peter and myself stopped off at the Old Head beach to bathe our tired and sore legs. We spent a hugely enjoyable quarter-hour wading through cold seawater as we looked back on a great dayās racing, waist deep in Westport.