On of the most underappreciated jobs in race organisation, because it's a hidden role I think, is the one of preparing a race result. It happens when all of the excitement has died down after the event and often in the dead of night with many people anxiously awaiting confirmation of their fantastic performances (or not as the case may be). As you might guess the rewards are thin on the ground - satisfaction at a job well done being the only one that springs to mind - and the hazards of making a mistake can be considerable in terms of ‘grief’.

As many races in Galway are organised by a relatively small band of experienced volunteers, with not many resources at their disposal aside from enthusiasm, it's often a small miracle that results to races are produced to such a high standard. It can be a lonely 'gig' to be sitting in your kitchen at midnight armed only with a shaky race video, a digital clock printout and some hastily scribbled notes, and to be ultimately entrusted with making statistical sense of the chaos at the finish line. All the time you know that there are, perhaps hundreds, of anxious people awaiting the outcome.

James Lundon, Athenry's statistician extraordinaire, has produced as accurate and as full a race result as humanly possible from last Tuesday's 5km in Newcastle. In doing so he has battled the demons of the runners who ran but never entered, the runners with numbers on their backs, the women who turned out as men on the night (and vice versa!) and many other assorted glitches and snafu's. Even after this process there are still a number of unknown's in the results attached and if you can do anything to shed light on the topic please do so by mailing myself at [email protected] or by posting a comment to this article.

We owe a vote to James and to the other brave souls who will take on this task in Tuam, Craughwell, Claregalway, Loughrea and Galway City over the next five weeks.