Plagiarised directly from the horse's mouth! The RunIreland website - in which three of our members - Ray O'Connor, Seb Locteau and Alan Burke are instrumental - recently won an award for their website:

Galway owned website, RunIreland.com was last night presented with a prestigious Eircom Spider Award by Dara O'Briain in the Convention Centre, Dublin. The Eircom Spiders Awards is an annual event honouring Irish individuals and organisations for their outstanding achievements online and are considered an important benchmark for distinction and merit in web-based business strategies.

The RunIreland website is recognised as Ireland's biggest running website and attracts 400,000 unique visitors per year. The site has made it easier for charities and local clubs to organise events by using the innovative online booking system. The website was created by swimming and triathlon coach, Sebastien Locteau from Athenry and Connemarathon Race Organiser and local business man, Ray O'Connor. Both keen sports enthusiasts, Sebastien has several Iron Man accolades and Ray has notched up 115 Marathons.

Runireland director Ray O'Connor said 'Winning this award means so much to us because it recognises the effort we put in to create a fantastic website and more importantly, that we have built a very strong online community and we enjoy interacting with them daily.

Working with our web agency Proactive Design and Marketing, we used the technology that we developed for the Connemara Marathon and expanded it to allow other races to benefit from our learning curve. It essentially means that smaller races can create their own Web Page free of charge and larger events use the site to gain exposure.'