Team Geared Up

KILDARE, IRELAND (Team Geared Up) - It’s Monday lunch-time and it seems an ideal time to put together the report on the Connemarathon. It was my first experience of a large-scale running event so all I can say is that it was a brilliant experience!

Of course, it all kicked off on Sunday morning with a 7am alarm to get up, load up on porridge, and just chill out for a while before jumping on the bus from Galway city. I’d been woken a bit earlier to the sound of the windows rattling to a large wind, and all I was thinking of was ‘what was I thinking?!?!’. Still though, by the time we were up, the car had de-frosted itself and it was looking like an o.k. day for my first half marathon. Anyway, I’m sure it’s the experience of everyone at their first race, but the we laughed as we packed our bag at the car, and noticed all the other participants subtly checking out each other for ideas. Those runners wearing shorts, those wrapped up in bags, those bringing newspapers for the bus, those on their walkmans, etc. All very funny and the only thing we were kicking ourselves about was leaving the camera behind. Doh! As I sat on the bus out to our first stop-off, I had this nagging familiarity of something though that I couldn’t place…..
After being dropped off in Oughterard, it came to me! As I queued with my see-through plastic bag with my only belongings, crammed into a large tent with countless other runners while queueing for a small hot drink and any freebee energy bars, it reminded me of all those prisoner of war camps you see in movies and on tv! The only difference was we were willingly here of course - although for some, it looked like they’d been dragged there so maybe that part isn’t true :)
Still though, after a some brief sipping of hot drinks to try keep some heat in our bodies, the calmness of Oughterard was rudely replaced by the mobs at the starting location of the half-marathon, Leenane. As we were arriving in, the walkers were leaving on their trek already an hour ahead of the runners. You can imagine the pandemonium.

To describe the weather of the day, I can only say the word that it was an ‘Irish’ day. As the race director put it, “expect wind, hail showers, sun, sunburn and frostbite”. The only one I didn’t see was the final one (which is probably a good thing ;). It made for interesting running!
And to give a brief idea of this, in the time waiting everyone to gather together at the start line, we experienced a large hailshower and glorious sunshine. Welcome to Ireland eh?!?
As for the race, as I’m sure is normal, there was the mob to be avoided at the beginning of the race (not to mention I had to try and cover up the fact that I was running in Nike’s, not Asics - I felt seriously out of place :), but as the 2500 half-marathoners slowly got into stride, everyone spread out nicely leaving comfortable to enjoy the “breath-taking” views of Connemara. Coming from my own background of just running for fun, and usually running in groups of a maximum of 5, this was a major shock to my system.

As for the run, myself and Naomi were taking it pretty easy, as both of us were only over injuries so made sure to enjoy the most of the day. After the initial climb out of Leenane [updated to reflect author error], the road settles down and my only memory of difficulties was we weren’t expecting the lonnnnggg slow drag up the final 2 mile long hill before the final two miles of (relatively) flat running into Maam’s Cross. In short, the road wasn’t as hilly as expected, but I can only imagine that it makes a tough course for setting a fantastic time, considering the amount of gradient involved. As a compliment to my runners also, Nike Pegasus, they were fantastic considering I’d only run in them on 3 previous occasions so was expecting lots of soreness from them.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I didn’t have my camera so am lacking in any photos of the day. For anyone looking for the photos, it’s best to keep an eye on this link to Flickr for the tag ‘Connemarathon’. Only one batch of photos seems to have been uploaded so far, but hopefully more will appear as the week goes by and people recover enough to post their images….

Finally, kudos to the organisers, it was seriously well organised for the scale of the event and considering it was all over Connemara and involved 4,000 competitors. I’m impressed. You’ll already find updates on the Connemarathon website, and links to the application forms to next year’s event :) Results can be found here.

My only strange observation, and probably coming from someone who’s just not in the running scene…. The sheer quantity and waste of all the bottles! As the website itself even testifies to, “40,000 bottles of Galway Irish Spring Water, 3,500 bowls of Buitoni pasta, 10,500 of Jacobs Fig Rolls, 6,000 of Red Dragon energy drink, 1,500 oranges, 1,500 bananas.” Is that not a ridiculous waste of plastic?!?!? Why not set it so that everyone has to carry their own water or is there not some sort of better solution to this? All ideas/thoughts welcome!

- Neal :) -