IT FELT A little surreal that the North-West 10k race was over after 10 metres.
Ciaran Doherty was in no mood to hang around and the Burtonport man surged off down the Pearse Road and that was, as they say, that.
Letterkenny AC’s Doherty had previously won the race in 2003 and 2014.
“It was ideal conditions for running,” Doherty said in the drizzle at the Letterkenny Community Centre.
Picture caption: A group competing at the 2016 North-West 10k. Picture by Kieran Carlin.
As he came in to sight at Gleneany House for the final few hundred metres of the 20th staging of this event, it was clear that Doherty had, literally, ran away with it.
“It’s not one of the easiest 10ks. I just settled into my own running. I had a time in my head that I wanted to hit and I was concentrating on that.
“It’s never easy to run this race because you never know who’ll be here. You can almost beat yourself on the course.
“Everyone is coming out of winter training and just seeing where they’re at. I knew it was within me to break 32 minutes.”
He did that, but only just, dipping neatly under his target for a time of 31 minutes and 59 seconds.
He was, as Patsy McGonagle observed, ‘the only man who came to race’ and the World Masters medalist certainly didn’t hang around.
There was a titanic battle for the runners-up spot on the home turn, where Danny Mooney pulled away from Mark McPaul over the final 200 metres.
“That was busier than the normal 9-5,” the Letterkenny AC man laughed at the finish. I thought I”d come in and see if I could stick with Ciaran but it didn’t last too long!
“I got a second wind coming up by The Grill. It was a good battle and it was a good day all round.”
If his warm-up event was testing, Adam Speer managed to run 22k beforehand. Speer is in training for an Ironman event in a couple of weeks’ time and breezed home to complete his day’s running.
Huddles of competitors, fun-runners and walkers gathered in the car park of the Community Centre afterwards.
It’s an even that is about more than the times and the places, though, as the representatives of the Irish Pilgrimage Trust, Donegal Branch and Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Ireland, Donegal Branch would testify. They’re the benefitting charities from this year’s event and stand to receive a princely windfall in the coming months.
“It’s a great community event,” said the Irish Athletics Team Manager, Patsy McGonagle.
“It was a great success. It ticks every box in terms of organisation.
“It’s a big community involved. The people of Donegal respond very strongly to this so you have to be very, very positive.”
His comments were echoed by the race director, Brendan McDaid, for whom participation is the big word.
“We’re delighted with how it went,” he said.
“Numbers aren’t quite as good as previous years but people are picking and choosing with the amount of events that are on.
“We still had 1,100 runners and another six or seven hundred walkers. It’s all about the money raised for charity.”
A group from Loreto Secondary School in Letterkenny had been urging people to ‘donate your steps’ in an attempt to raise awareness of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.
That’s the thing about the North-West 10k: Everyone had a story. A reason. A purpose.
There were those who walked dogs, pushed prams and they came in all shapes and sizes.
There were those who’d come for the craic. There were those who came for the race.
And there were those, too, who’d their own personal trevails and triumphs to deal with since last year and for whom simply getting the chance to get around the course was a success.
Already, the thoughts of the organisers – the real heroes of this event – have turned to next year and the 21st North-West 10k.
Somehow, it feels as if it’ll come around as quick as Ciaran Doherty did yesterday.
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