For those who've been off the planet for the past six years, Paul is a member of our club and competes in the 200m at the upcoming London Olympics. His races are on Tuesday the 7th, and then the 8th, and 9th August. Paul was born and bred in Athenry (see http://www.paulhession.co/biography.html). He...

Of Irish parentage, Kellie moved to Ireland from England in her early twenties. She commutes to... Ballina three days a week and, yeah, that's the Ballina in County Mayo. Let no one else complain about not having time to train. She's married to Damien Burke who treats sports injuries and has two...

Frank joined Athenry AC in 2008 and applied himself steadily to the difficult task we've all experienced of getting back to real exercise in adulthood. Unfortunately, he suffered a series of injuries, including falling off a ladder, which kept him out for two years. He's back now and has recently...

The wall of sound hits me as I take the last bend. The glowing red digits on the finish line clock say 2 hours 59 minutes and the seconds are counting inexorably up. My entire existence is distilled into the death battle between those red digits and my aerobically depleted legs but the sound is a...

By Marie O'Connor A gang of Athenry AC competitors hit the track in Dangan last night to compete in the Galway Track and Field Competition. The brave souls were Pearse Hunter, Iain Shaw, Philip Magnier, Peadar Nugent, Anne Hunter, Kellie Burke, Assumpta Feeney and Marie O’Connor. The evening was a...

By Marie O'Connor June 16 th had been a date in my diary for months and it finally rolled in bringing with it a Marathon, 50km, 100km and 10k race. The plan was to pick up Anne Lyng and Val and hit the sidelines in Portumna to scream abuse at our club mates. Like all good plans it went off without a...

By Sinéad Brody (photo by Jan Quilitz) It certainly was a Great Race at the Ballybrit Racecourse Sunday the 17 th June. A happy number of 14 athenryacers, out of the 285 ;-), took part. The course started and finished on the racecourse itself, nearly like the way the horses do. It was grand and...

A number of happy Athenry runners can now designate themselves as Ultra Marathoners after completing the 50k trail race in Portumna on Saturday 16th June. They inlcude Noel Fox, Deirdre Quinn, Kieran Guirey, Maeve Noone, Aoife Callan, Janet Clancy, Patrick Forde, and Kenneth O'Hara. Congratulations...

Okay, so I am waaaaaaaaay behind on the blogging situation - but here's one I started earlier (and failed to finish until now). More news from the US anon... Sometimes, if you are not that fast, it’s necessary to apply a little cunning. You don’t need to outrun a bear, just to find a fat guy to...

Martin joined Athenry AC in early 2010 and has shown an appetite for hard training almost from the start. He also likes to follow a plan with good foundations laid. Last year he did what seemed like the entire training program for the Dublin Marathon but he never intended to participate. He built on...

Galway 5KM Series (Loughrea) – 15 May 2012. Been going well recently. Fairly well anyhow! Clocking some good times in training. Racing some half-decent times. Sub-72 in Ballycotton 10M. Sub-43 in Ardrahan 10KM. Best 10KM in embarrassingly long time. Off little mileage too. For me anyhow. Nothing new...

For those of you who may be fed up with all the Titanic publicity, don’t read any more of this. Back in 1912 my late uncle Andy Keane was one of a large family living on a small farm outside Athenry. For obvious reasons he decided to emigrate to America but, unfortunately, he decided to travel on...

By Frances Leahy For a lot of people, running has been a way of life from school sports days to continuing on in their adult life – but for some of us that is not the case. Back in May 2011 a group of women joined F4L group in Athenry AC not knowing what we were letting ourselves in for. We gave it...

Noel Fox is another recent recruit to our club but that hasn't stopped him hitting the ground running in a big way since joining. Altogether he has completed 5 marathons: Dublin 2008, Newry 2009, Stockholm 2011, Connemara 2012, Limerick 2012. B elow see his race report on the Limerick marathon on...

Two numbers -- six hundred and twenty seven finishers in Newcastle, six hundred and twenty five in Claregalway -- tell the story eloquently: this Galway 5k Series has been a huge success so far and we look forward to this continuing in the next four races. The Claregalway race last night brought a...

A race report from Aoife Callan on her April 15 marathon in Milan with partner Ray Somers, two great runs. Ray decided he wanted to put an end to the Monday night Ryehiller’s slagging and get his first marathon under his belt. He mentioned doing a marathon in the spring in Europe so I did the...

Several Athenry AC athletes got to challenge the World's current best distance runner, Kenenisa Bekele, in the Great Ireland Run 10k on Sunday 15th April. None seriously troubled him but how many sports are there where "ordinary joes" can compete against the best on the planet? How many are there...

To begin our tales of joy and woe, Jane Mangan has sent in the following race report of her day out in a very sunny Connemara. Stepping off the bus in Leenane I had a strange sense of calm. It was a beautiful day, Connemara was spectacular and everyone was in good form. Wanting to conserve my energy...

Assumpta joined Athenry AC in January, 2008 and over the next couple of years competed in several half marathons in New York, Longford, Dublin, and Connemara. Baby girl Brynn arrived in 2010 and curtailed her running activites for a couple of years. However, from January of this year, it's been back...

Fabulous sunshine and fabulous running were the order of the day at the Craughwell 10 mile run on the Sunday of St Patrick's Day weekend. Athenry AC came through with 66 competitors on the day, over a tenth of the entire field. We were rewarded with a gold medal for our women's team in the Co...