Imagine There Is A Race

... and nobody turns up.

Nobody from the organisation, that is.

Unbelievable as it may sounds, that's what happened to us on Saturday. Despite posting information on their web site as well as papers and radio, the organiser totally forgot about the race and eventually had to be dragged there, 90 minutes after she was supposed to open registration. About 150 - 200 bemused and increasingly irate runners could not believe what was going on, but eventually the overall organiser of the Killarney summerfest took matters into his own hands and decided there would be no registration but we were welcome to run anyway, without payment, and with 45 minutes delay a significantly reduced field set off from the usual start line. Luckily enough, since they always use the same route for the Killarney 5Ks we know the route well enough to be able to do it without much help.


Despite all the shambles, once I ran the first step all that funny business was out of my mind and I only concentrated on running as fast as I could. With some of the usual fast local runners being absent (maybe they knew something), I was in fifth position early on, but dropped a place before the half mile marker. I decided the best tactic for a fast time in a 5K is to start out fast and hang on for dear life. I knew I was going well when I left Pat O'Shea behind me, someone I have never managed to beat; I was hoping for a first. Silly me. Pat is close to being a world class master runner (I won't mention his age) and beating him is not something a washed up never-has-been should even think about. At the halfway mark I heard his footsteps closing in and he went past me to take up his customary position ahead of me, always seemingly within reach but always just that little bit too fast.

Somewhere around the first mile I started wheezing, which is something I always do when the effort gets so high. I must be louder than a steam engine towards the end, and I do get the odd idiotic comment but I prefer running fast to silently.

Pat caught up to the runner ahead of him, a guy in a white shirt, and much to my surprise I drew closer to him as well. We met plenty of other runners who were now treating this as a pure fun run in the park and had not waited for the semi-official "start", but they always heard me coming and moved out of the way. With less than a mile to go I was fewer than 10 steps behind the white t-shirt, but at that point he started accelerating, trying to hold me off and catch Pat. He succeeded in the first but not the second objective.

The uphill finish is the cruellest part of an otherwise perfect race course. I rued the fact that there was nobody within reach that would have pulled me to a faster time, but at the same time was aware that I had let the white t-shirt pull away, so this was entirely my own fault. I hit the stop button on the Garmin at what turned out to be a very exact 5K mark and collapsed in the grass for a minute, trying to regain my breath. Eventually I actually looked at the time, to get a very pleasant surprise: 18:05, a new PB by 2 seconds!

I had a very quick chat with the other guys, who voiced their amazement that I was able to run a time like that without doing any speedwork at all. I have always been a miles guy rather than an intervals one.

I could not hang around because I had been supposed to meet Niamh at the time when the race had only started. Luckily it turned out she was just as late as me, the kids' rides in the fairground had all taken longer than planned and we were all equally late. Looking at the photos I think they all had a great time.

I still can't quite believe the disgraceful shambles of the organisation. Has anyone ever heard of the organiser forgetting to turn up? Even so, why was there only one person supposed to sign up 200 runners, it would have been chaos even if she had been there in time! This used to be a very competitive race, before my time. They then decided to move more and more towards the fun run spectrum. A few years ago they did away with numbers, then the finishing line, no longer published results and a couple of years ago one organisers even voiced her amazement that some fast runners were still turning up.

That's their own decision, of course, and if they want to do it that way it's up to them. But this has now gone way beyond any reasonable point. This time they hurt the fun runners much more than the fast ones. There was a race last week, there are two more next weekend, and I will shrug that off and move on. But some runners at the back of the pack had been training especially for this, and to be treated with such contempt ... I fear we lost some people to the sport yesterday.

23 Jul

Killarney Summerfest 5K, 18:05, 5:50 pace, avg. HR 180
   Mile splits: 5:39, 5:48, 6:05, (0:31 rest)