Mother Nature talked to me at the weekend! I went to Wicklow on the 12th of April 08, with my Friends Enda, Mark, Martin and Aoife. I went to Wicklow in the past and did some cycling and running around the mountains. I went there with the thought of testing my core capacity after my surgery 10...

The Toughest Foot Race on Earth – The Marathon des Sables Diana Hogan-Murphy, a pharmacist from Cork living in Galway, recalls what was on the menu last week: 245 kilometres of Saharan dunes, rocky river beds, salt flats, stony valleys, steep mountain ascents, 50 degree heat, instant oats for...

Cratloe Woods was the venue last Saturday morning for a day out on the trails. Twelve orienteering virgins took a crash course in map reading before heading out to get lost on the wooded hills. Gary Doherty made a fine return to running after a few months forced abstinence and single-handedly...

DOUBLE TROUBLE (NO TROUBLE!) IN LONG EATON I just know that this report deserves more time than I am going to give it. Why? Because it was probably the best running experience of my life (to date). I ran my first marathon 6 months after giving up smoking 30 cigarettes a day - New York 2000 completed...

As you all know we got all four seasons [a new name for the Connemarathon: the "Four Seasons' Connemarathon" - Ed.] in one day in Connemara last Sunday. I got to Leenane in good time. Received a lift from Oughterard with Mick Rice - no buses for me! We passed the Ultra marathoners on the way as we...

Connemara Ultra 2008 5 minutes before the 9am start time 100+ runners haul themselves out of a nice warm bus at the start line. Cold! Ray informs me I don't have enough time to get in my extra 0.7 mile run that I needed to bring my mileage up to 40miles ... just go! This is a 39.3 mile race but I...

This Race Report, submitted by Cian Blake, takes us off to Spain. Enjoy the trip.... Everyone watches them out of the corner of their eye. The hotel restaurant is warm yet their unsmiling heads peep out of black puffa jackets as they spill over the sides of the chairs swinging sinewy legs. Retina...

A blow-by-blow account of my best ever race. Ballycotton 2008, my last race as a senior as I’ll hit the big four-oh at the end of the month. Here’s what happened. Mick Rice, Mark Davis and I line up as close to the front as possible but are still swallowed up in the crowd. By race-start we are nine...

"Well done", "Wow", "Congrats"........these are some of the replies which I received to my texts after achieving a PB in Barcelona. James Lundon's reply read: I EXPECT A REPORT FOR THE WEB SITE. GOOD WORK!!! Well, here goes, James. I didn't tell many that I was running the Barcelona marathon as I...

Muck and Misery? Sometime late last year, I made a promise, to nobody in particular, that I would travel to Belfast to make up a team for the Senior Inter-Clubs Cross-Country race. Paul McNamara was fired up for this race for a long time after a disappointing run at the Inter-Counties in the Curragh...

In the midst of a busy weekend, one notable achievement almost went unnoticed. Tucked away in the results from the Adare 10km was a prizewinner in the V45 sectiom, Maire Teresa Beatty. Obviously those hard yards at the track are paying off. In her own words... Not one to write reports. But it was a...

There were two Galway men to the fore at today's AAI National Inter Club Cross Country Championships in Belfast and a further two playing a valuable supporting role. Athenry AC's Paul McNamara and Galway City Harrier Gary Thornton both ran superb races to finish well inside the top ten places and...

I was enjoying a nice winter break last week (early-February 2008) in Malta with my long-suffering wife and children and had promised faithfully not to do any running during the holiday. Thanks to a secret pocket in my Adidas training bag, I had concealed my favourite runners along with a pair of...

Connemara Marathon Race Director, Athenry AC member and all 'round good-egg Ray O'Connor publishes a semi-regular blog on preparations for the big event in April. He's kindly given us permission to reproduce his latest blog entry. The blog itself can be found at http://www.connemarathon.com...

Deirdre Hassett is a Galway-based athlete who competes in a plethora of events including road races, triathlons, soccer and tag rugby tournaments to name a few. A member of the Galway Triathlon Club, Deirdre recently travelled to New Zealand in the company of Helen Lavin (whose ultramarathon trail...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3911965737085279441 (8 minutes 20 seconds) Probably the less said about this video, the better. It was my warm-down lap after the Connaught Cross-Country Championship a few weeks ago. The lap was about 1600 metres long, therefore I was going at about 8:10-8:20...