Brian Furey

05 March, 2012

Originally I had signed up as a volunteer for this race. With training going well I decided to try and run it instead. Luckily for me, Peter O Farrell agreed to mark it at the last minute and actually demarked it as well. He marked it using the new marking guidelines that he wrote which basically mean you mark where there is a change in direction on the race route.
I gave a lift to the race to Greg Byrne who had the boxes of yearbooks with him for selling. Greg had spent most of his free evenings during the winter putting the 2011 yearbook together. We got to Crone Wood for 9.45 which gave me plenty of time to register for the year, warm-up and have a look over some of the race route.
There was two walking groups meeting around the same time in the car park so our parking marshals did a great job in making maximum use of parking space.

Conditions were perfect on the morning as well similar to Powerscourt Ridge in November.I ran this race 2 years ago so was familiar enough with it. There were one change from that route in that Gerry Brady had added one extra climb up Maulin ride in the run down the fire-road at the end.

Some new faces on the start-line this time out. I took the lead from the start and held it until summiting Maulin, closely followed by Eanna Cunnane and Alan Kelly. I didn’t know this at the time. Coming off Maulin I was passed by Alan on the run down to the wall. I passed Alan again shortly after as he hesitated on where to go. From here I held the lead to the finish never holding too comfortable a lead. Good racing all round.
Thanks to race organizer Billy Alexander and everyone involved in organising the race.