Congratulations to the athletes from Mullingar that took on the testing 26 mile 385 yard challenge of the AAI National Marathon Championship, which was run in conjunction with the Dublin City Marathon on October Bank Holiday Monday (26th Oct), and lived to tell the tale!

This year was the 30th Anniversary edition of the race and a there was a record entry of over 12,000 with 10,468 managing to finish on the day. Maurice Looby was first in from Mullingar running a very even paced race to finish an excellent 80th place overall (18th in his master category) in 2:45:26, which is great reward for all the hard work put in at training over many months. At the half way mark, Martin Lyons was well on target to comfortably break 3 hours and still so at 30km but he suffered a bit over the last few miles though just managed to find an extra bit at the end to break 3 hours with 2:59:51. No problem with pace for Eddie Newman who must have an in-built metronome such was his perfectly even paced run and also got under 3 hours, though with only 2 seconds to spare, in 2:59:58 – phew!

Matt Glennon admitted after that he really suffered in the latter stages and vowed never to try another marathon; only time will tell if he really means it! Tom McGrath has most reason to feel disappointed with his race, having been on target for a 2:36 finish all the way to 30km but came undone in the closing miles to finish outside his pre-race target, due no doubt to the residual effects of a recent niggling injury (always a hazard with the tough marathon training regime). Tom is a very experienced athlete though and knows that some days it just doesn’t go right, for whatever reason, and might take some comfort from that cold fact. It’s only a little under a year ago that Darragh Thornton thought 6km cross country was too far, but he ran a careful race and was very pleased to finish in 3:04 and no doubt will now set his sights on a sub-3 hour effort another day. Also running well up to the 30km mark and on schedule to meet their pre-race targets but falling foul of the dreaded last few miles, though still very pleased to have completed the course, were Mark Carroll, Kieran Nolan and John O’Reilly.

All in all, a mixed bag of results for the Mullingar men; some delighted with their performances and others not so, though we know that whatever happens they’ll still keep running and look forward to the next competition. The race included a team event and thanks to the performances of Maurice, Eddie and Matt, the Mullingar master men finished 6th team, which is a very credible finish and congratulations to them.