Fresh from arriving home from the Dunshaughlin 10K less than twelve hours before Paul Duffy and I set off to find Palmerstown early on Sunday morning. Located to the west of the city centre in the county of South Dublin. The area is bordered to the west by Lucan, to the south by Ballyfermot and to the east by the village of Chapelizod.
As it turned out it didn’t take us very long to find the registration point for the now annual Palmerstown 5K big run. Our attendance at the race came about from a tip off the night before from Emily. The race is only in it’s second year has prize money of €100, €60 and €40 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the male and female categories and is only attended by locals.
The race was due to kick off at 1PM but got a bit delayed. Our initial race plan had been to run a comfortable pace and race the last stretch but a few runners from Donore and DSD showed up to ruin our best laid plans. We agreed to split the prize money if we took any home.
When the race started Paul took it out. Running in a group of four Paul kept the pace going and never looked like being beaten on a tough course with plenty of hills descending deep into the Liffey Valley. Paul and a DSD runner dropped myself and a Donore runner at 2K and I managed to drop the Donore runner a kilometre later at 3K. Neither myself nor Paul looked like losing our positions at that stage and even though the DSD runner did pull ahead at one stage Paul had the edge on the final kilometre and came home first followed by the DSD runner and I was third. Times were 16:22 and 16:57 and we even got home for the football.
