Frank Duffy 10 Miles August 19th 2023

report by Fiona Leheny

The 2023 Irish Life Frank Duffy 10 miler took place last Saturday 19th August. I decided to sign up mainly because I have never raced 10 miles before and I need to get as much experience into my little legs before the 29th October (say no more about that yet!)

To prepare for the distance, I headed out on Friday night….. to Sprezzatura in Rathmines to get a good feed of pasta followed by a relaxing visit to the cinema to see Oppenheimer. The last time I wrote a race report, it seemed to be more of a weather report for a very good reason. I thought that this was going to be along the same lines going by the storm that was banging the roof of the Omniplex that night. Thankfully, I woke up to a pleasant, windy & warm Saturday morning.

I arrived at the Phoenix visitor centre in plenty of time and was delighted to see some familiar faces rock up shortly after me. Myself, Eileen and Mary chatted for a bit to kill some time and headed up towards the start line. 

I hadn’t thought much about pacing for the race but decided to place myself behind but in sight of the 80mins pacers. At this point, I had lost all fellow club members at the dreaded port aloo queues so I put my music on to get in the zone. I felt good starting off for the first 5km. I finally spotted a SW jersey beside me but not for long. It was Jean flying past me. There was, no way / Jose, that I was going to keep up with her.  She was in the zone but I still managed to get her attention and wave her off into the sunset!

I slowed down somewhat in the second 5km as it was a little hillier and lost sight of the 80min pacers but got back in the zone and felt good again in the final 5km. I suppose the giveaway that I am new enough to racing is that my brain still works in KMs for a 10mile race. I tend to break most races down into ‘5km parkrun chunks’ as that is what kick-started my joy of running.

With the lack of red and white SW jerseys, I found a couple of Brother Pearse runners (assuming no restrictions here on mentioning other clubs in these reports) doing a similar pace and keeping up with them was my goal which got me over the line in 1:23.

Once I caught my breath, I met up with the fellow club members, a small group evidenced in the pic below. Everyone was content with their performance & well done to Jean with a PB (missing from the pic). Myself, Eileen and Mary headed back for a well deserved coffee and some lovely chats which was the perfect end to the morning. Thanks, Ladies, for the company.

Full results available at: www.chiptimes.biz