James Lundon - Keepin' It Real
Ballycotton 2005 Mick Rice
The omens were not good to begin with. I had tried playing some music on my laptop in the hotel on race morning. The computer was set to randomly select a track and it plumped for a particularly depressing version of âSad Songs and Waltzesâ by Willie Nelson. Crap! If youâre looking for a confidence boost before a race âWearyâ Willie Nelson is not your man. A look out the window was much more cheerful. Bright spring sunshine, fresh sea air and a complete absence of wind are as much as any roadrunner can ask from the weatherman. Peter, Andrew and myself gathered at the hotel for breakfast and talk of what lay ahead. The mood was upbeat, cheerful even. The weather and the prospect of the âBallycotton 10â would put anyone in good form. Half an hour later we were on the road to pick up James Lundon from his B&B. We spotted him from the car perched on a roadside rock looking like a little Limerick leprechaun, with an attitude. From there it was straight to the scene of the dayâs action in Ballycotton Village.
This race is an institution, one of those rare events where the build-up to the race is almost more important than the running itself. There are familiar faces, warm smiles and unintentionally silly outfits everywhere. Everything is so well organised and stewarded that you donât really have anything practical to worry about except getting yourself to the starting line. You can relax and chat, buy purple âBallycotton 10â t-shirts and catch up with everyone elseâs injuries. Dave Dunne had also joined us by this stage and he looked fit and ready for the fray. Dave is a cool customer with a body-fat percentage that a super-model would be jealous of. Many hands were shaken and tall stories exchanged and before we knew where we were it were time to concentrate on the business at hand. Peter, Tony Harrington and myself started into a warm-up with about forty minutes to go before the start. Even a warm-up run had its complications as you have to weave in and out of the gathering crowds. After only a few moments I became separated from the other Athenry runners and was only to catch brief glimpses of them again before the end of the race.
In the last week before the race I had been worried by a calf injury. What felt like a very minor muscle tear, had reduced my training to a handful of careful runs in the last seven days. In fairness, I knew I wasnât going to get any faster in the week before a race but the prospect of not recovering fully beforehand had landed me in Stress City. Anyway, there I was on the start line, about a hundred runners or so from the front, ready to rock and roll. Having become separated from the rest of the Athenry crew I could only hope they were in a good place too. The only indication I got as to their fate before âthe offâ was seeing James Lundon scrambling down the steep bank by the roadside and into poll position. My personal target for the day was to try and match last yearâs time of 58:53 with an outside chance of dipping below that it if all went very well. If I were to be lucky, that sort of time would also put me somewhere near the top 100 finishers.
When the gun went off it took me about 30 or 40 seconds to get into a proper stride. I was to find out later that some other Athenry runners had fared much worse, starting as they did a lot further back in the field. Although Ballycotton is a great race, the one criticism I would have of it is that the start could be better organised. If you donât time your arrival at the start line well you can be shuffled back behind many, many hundreds of runners with less ambitious time goals than yourself. A combination of luck, judgement and sheer brass neck is required to get a good starting spot. In the first quarter mile I had great difficulty passing what appeared to be the entire Brady Bunch in matching outfits and who must have started alongside the Kenyans. Needless to say Mr Brady was upset when I eventually had to barge through. Iâll leave it at that.
En Route...
As many will know, the first mile and a half or so of this race is mostly downhill. Itâs easy to lose control and fly away at a pace that you couldnât hope to sustain. Although I passed the first mile marker with 5:47 on the clock I was being passed by walkman-listening, basketball-boot-wearing, three abreast hoards like I was standing still. As demoralising as this process can be I felt fairly sure Iâd see some of them again before the end. The second mile was a carbon copy of the first as I tried to relax into a manageable pace as a steady stream of runners continued to pass on either side. Mile two was completed in 5:46. As the crowd loosened out a little I tried to spot Peter Delmer on the road ahead without success. Peter I and normally run very similar races and it was slightly disconcerting to know that he was âout thereâ but that I couldnât find him. There wasnât anything else to do but plough ahead. After the early downhill sections the route flattens out. Iâve heard Ballycotton being described as a âspoon shapedâ course. The early hilly section is covered on both the way out and back from a large four-mile loop. My last mile before we âloopedâ into the Cork countryside was covered in 5:51.
My racing tactics, insomuch as I had any, were to try to keep the pace for each mile below six minutes each and then to push hard in the last two miles back up the handle of the âspoonâ. Running mile splits at this pace put me right at my limit and Iâd need to concentrate hard to keep it going for an hour. My plan almost came to grief straight away with a 5:58 timing at mile four. Time to put the head down and work. Some of the early speedsters were coming back to me now but generally people had found their place in the pack and were well into slog-it-out mode. The weather was still beautiful and there was no wind to speak off. I passed by the halfway point with 29:15 on the clock. It wasnât too long ago that it was a cherished ambition of mine to break 30 minutes for a five-mile race. In fact this halfway split was only 32 seconds outside my PB for that distance. I felt fairly comfortable and tried not to think any further ahead than the heels of the person in front of me.
Moving into the second part of the race the real work started. It was getting harder and harder to hold the same pace. Even though I was struggling I could see I was gradually moving forwards through the field, albeit very slowly. I was passing three or four runners each mile but occasionally someone would go past me like a rocket. Thanks to a James Lundon suggestion from previous years the 10K point is marked on the road and I was happy to see that there was only 36:25 on the clock as I passed it. Once again this is only marginally outside my PB for the distance. At this stage in the race I suspect most runners began thinking of the hills that lay ahead in the final couple of miles. I consciously tried to consolidate for a mile or two to steel myself for the puke-inducing experience that I knew lay just down the road. Miles seven and eight were 5:55 and mile 5:56 splits. As I passed the eight-mile point I could see the bottom of the first climb ahead and the road bathed in warm sunshine. How innocent it must look from inside a car.
From my watch I knew that my finish time would be very similar to the previous yearâs effort - if I could keep it going. I also knew that I had only just scraped into the top-100 finishers in 2004. If I pushed on up the final stretch I had a good shot at one of those elusive t-shirts. This race now became one of those rare occasions where I actually tried to race other runners rather than just run fast. Every runner on the road ahead and behind me now had the potential to deprive me of a top-100 spot. The initial feedback wasnât that healthy as I slowed to 6:04 for mile nine. There is a brief respite from the incline as the route passes parallel to the coast and through Ballycotton village towards the finish line. I tried to regroup and go again. Even though I knew I had slowed I wasnât being passed often and was still catching the odd runner. My last hurrah up the hills towards the line produced a more respectable 5:49 timing for the last mile, a 58:53 finishing time, a nice top 100-t-shirt and a strong desire to throw up. I suppose I can call that a PB since I matched last years effort to the second.
Peter - Bringin'It Home
The world is always a much nicer, happier, friendly place once youâve finished the race. The pain melts away and you can catch your breath, slowly. In a matter of seconds one mystery was solved when Peter charged over the line, also cracking the top-100. Andrew Talbot was next across the line in 1:06:08, which was a fine run, and must have placed him highly in the M50 category. Not long afterwards Johnny OâConnor came home in a highly respectable time of 1:07:30. Congrats Johnny on a great race. Hot on his heel, literally, was the quiet man of the club Dave Dunne, only 11 seconds further back (1:07:41). By this time I had migrated back to the finish line as I was hoping to catch James Lundonâs arrival at the finish. James had targeted a sub-seventy minute finish for months and I was really hoping he could pull it off. I felt sure he would and wanted to be there to cheer him over the line. As the seconds and minutes clicked by there was no sign of James and my hopes were fading when a mutual pal told me that he was âhome-and-hosedâ and chatting to the rest of the Athenry crew further up the road. Iâd somehow managed to miss him flash past the line in a tremendous 1:09:23. Ultramarathon man Tony Harrington completed the Athenry finishing order when he came home in 1:11:17. All six Athenry runners had finished well into the top third of the race. It turned out that Peter, Dave, Johnny and particularly Tony, had all had to start well down the field and their already impressive times had suffered somewhat because of that.
The post-race chat in Ballycotton is almost a mirror image of what went beforehand. Stories of disaster, toil and tribulation mix with grins and handshakes. Almost immediately thoughts turn to next year and imponderables occupy the mind. Will we all still be around in twelve months time to do this again? Will we get as nice a day in 2006? Will we even get an entry? Will James Lundon have the neck to start with the Kenyans again? Could we get John Walshe to flatten out some of those hills ââ just a little!