Kildare Marathon

After work on saturday it was home to pack the bags and hit for kildare for sunday mornings marathon.The race was an 8am start so I was tucked up in bed by 10pm.The hotel kindly obliged by having an early breakfast for me before I headed to the Curragh for the race.I arrived at the Curragh by 7.30am giving me enough time for my warm up and a quick chat with my Irish team mate John O Regan who was pacing for the 3.15 hour marathoners.Race start was fast approaching and the atmosphere was building.

Me with the winner of the ladies marathon

The whole purpose of this race was to use it as a faster paced training run and to practice taking on fluids at the water stations.As we lined up at the start there was a few of the 'usual suspects' that I recognised from various other races.As soon as the gun went I found myself out in front on my own.This is a pretty rare position to find yourself in a marathon.........well for me anyway!!After about 4 miles I was joined by Peter Mooney.We ran shoulder to shoulder for the next 16 miles having a bit of a natter along the way to pass the time.Approaching the 20 mile mark we appeared to have a 10 minute lead over the third placed guy.My plan of using this as a training run went out the window!I was now in a position to win a marathon!.They say a marathon is a '20 mile warm up for a 10k race',so once we hit mile 20 I decided to make my move.I opened up a gap of about a minute or so and thankfully held on to take 1st place in 2.40:39 with Peter Mooney a brilliant 2nd only 30 seconds behind.

So my first marathon win in the bag.What an amazing feeling!My focus will remain on the world championships,but I would like to run another marathon or two in between.This might be my first and maybe my last marathon win but now that I have won one I know what that feels like.........and I'm hungry for more!

And they're off!