Kilnaboy 10 mile

Myself and Claire made the long trip from Maryhill to Kilnaboy, Co Clare, Ireland for the Kilnaboy 10 miler. Well the trip just happened to fit with a Leinster Heineken cup quarter final, a friends birthday party and a free lift from Irvine to Dublin from my golfing parents…

The race itself is through the Burren in Co Clare, a beautiful if slightly surreal looking limestone karsk landscape. I was hoping to recognise some faces but guess I’m away too long as there was nobody there I knew. After a warm up and a quick look at the race map you could tell that it was going to be 4 miles with the wind, 4 miles against and then a last hilly 2 miles with a tough uphill finish. That meant that the first 4 miles were fast… too fast… I ran 5:25, 5:15, 5:30 and 5:20. When I turned into the wind I almost instantly regretted my initial effort, but thankfully managed to tuck in with a few others and maintain a good pace at about 6 min miles. At 8 miles I took a quick look at the watch again, I was eyeing running sub 60 but with the wind was not too sure it was going to happen, it said 45:45, this gave me a big boast and help me keep pushing hard over the undulating last 2 miles. Up the finial 500m was tough but I hung on and came in in 57:22, good enough for 9th.

Claire had a good race too, coming home in a time of 1:21:28… she’s looking good to smash 4hr in the Lochaber marathon next Sunday ;-)

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.