I decided to sign up for the Great Ireland Run while on a post race buzz from the BHAA K Club 10km a few weeks ago. This race is also the National 10km Championship.
The sun was shining the day before. Surely it couldn’t change that much overnight? Oh but it did.. And what a day it was. Rain, wind, hills and more rain – what’s not to love? 
A quick warm up consisting of jogging for shelter and a quick cup of coffee at the visitors centre and it was time to get to the start line. 
I’ve run the Great Ireland Run a number of different times over the years, but this was my first time running it as a member of a club. There was a nice championship feel about the race as the Elite athletes were introduced to the crowd just ahead of us. A quick countdown and we were off.
Running up Chesterfield Avenue, there was great support from Myles and the Sportsworld men on their warm up. The route has a fast first 5km, which today decided to be into the wind. My aim was to stick with a group and somehow shelter from the wind. What goes down must come back up and at the 5km mark, we started climbing back up until the finish. It was great to see Myles once again standing under the 400m to go sign encouraging you to sprint until the end.
First home for the women was Sinead Tagney in a brilliant time of 38:46, followed by myself and Maria Jones to claim the bronze medal in the Senior Womens behind DSD and Galway City Harriers.
First home for the men was Karol Cronin, followed by Phil Kilgannon and Karl Chatterton resulting in them winning bronze in the M35 category. Eileen Rowland also ran brilliantly to obtain bronze medal in her age category.
Sinead Tangney (9th) 38.48
Ciara Brady (11th) 39.34
Maria Jones (13th) 40.43
Mary Finn 40.58
Katie Nugent 46.31
Martina Nolan Jones 48.00
Siobhan Clarke 50.37
Audrai O’Driscoll 55.58
Delourdes Seymour 59.11
Eileen Rowland (3rd) 47.57
Mary O’Hare 57.51
Karol Cronin (7th) 33.36
Phil Kilgannon (15th) 35.34
Karl Chatterton (16th) 35.48
Andrew Brett 35.59
Michael Cunningham 37.03
Martin Doyle 38.11
Ronan Masterson 39.25
Noel Tobin 39.57
Will Greensmyth 40.08
Kieran Long 41.34
Garrett Moran 42.30
Adrian Lanigan 43.32
Aidan Curran 44.15
Karl Shevlin 44.35
Padraic Moran 46.46
Paul Cassidy 48.55
David Culhane 57.32
Apologies if I missed anyone

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