10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Dungarvan 10 Mile 2025

1. Sometime that I used to Run

I think that I’m beginning to understand what it’s like to get properly old. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to beat my 10 mile time from 2023 so I need to find new things to focus on to make racing interesting. Luckily Dungarvan provided other things to focus on as nearly everyone was running it. I decided to focus on beating Tadhg and fending off a resurgent Michael McMahon.

2. Fear of Carparks

I think that Irish people in cars are magnetically attracted to parking on grass, or even better a grassy kerb or most preferably of all a grassy kerb outside someone’s house. It is great to know this because no matter what time you arrive into Dungarvan on race day you can sail through the town and park in a lovely tarmac car park less than 400m from the start. Aidan who came with me was very impressed with my knowledge.

3. Dashboard Warning Light

I think that no matter how many terrible stress fractures and injuries I get I will never be able to resist ignoring the signs of a potential terrible injury. I probably shouldn’t have run Seville Half never mind Dungarvan as I’ve been suffering with sticky outside of calf syndrome where one part of the calf attaches itself onto the other and won’t come free. It’s not in any physio books so it is a new injury. If it was a warning light on a car it would probably be yellow so I just press the reset button for the race and drive on which will probably only work for so long.

4. Ballycotton 10 Style Field

I think that the field for this years Dungarvan 10 was the strongest deepest 10 mile field I have seen since the days of the Ballycotton 10 in non-magic shoes. Everyone from Cork, Waterford, Tipperary and a few invaders from Dublin turned up. Looking around I was thinking top 20 would be a great achievement. Tadhg asked me to drag him around to 53 minutes which made me want to beat him and put him back in his box even more.

5. This is Mad

I think that the start of the race was very mad. It went off more like a 10k than a 10 miler. Fearghal and Sean Doyle were gone gone, like properly gone with a few stragglers thinking about following. I was left miles back in a huge group of heavily trained or highly talented runners. I made up a bit of ground on the downhill before the one mile mark but was quickly passed out again as we went around the GSK roundabout and ran downhill towards the slippery U turn. I looked at my brand-new watch with AMOLED display which clearly showed that we were all going way too fast, so I let the group go and waited for the inevitable lull in proceedings to occur.

6. This is Grand

I think that it is very helpful to have run a race a good few times as it inevitably plays out the same way each time. Once the huge group reached the U turn with the slippery surface the pace dropped nicely, I used the downhill to catch back up to Tadhg and Michael McMahon who were my main targets for beating. Once I found them, I sat in and waited for the wind to start between miles 3 and 5 which seems to always be the case at this time of year in Dungarvan.

7. Tadhg’s Back

I think that Tadhg is very similar to Viv. He would love to beat me, it is very important to him. He is also similar to Viv in that he doesn’t seem to know what to do when he gets to the front of a group. I nearly had to jump up on his back to avoid crashing into him after four miles as when he found himself at the front of the group, he just stopped running. I don’t like tactical running as we are all way too useless to be using tactics so after the near terrible collision, I just ran near the front of any group to stay out of trouble.

8. Tailwind Time

I think that the section between 5 miles and 8 miles in Dungarvan is one of my favourite sections of road to run. It is probably because it is slightly downhill, is nearly always run with a tailwind and has a nice windy smooth road surface. I thought I was doing great as I was flying along catching Shane Collins and Tony Forristal until suddenly at seven miles I was passed at what seemed like twice the speed by a group containing Kris Liepins and Niamh Allen. It was an unfollowable group but at least it didn’t contain Tadhg, Michael McMahon or Viv.

9. The Two Barrys

I think that the last two miles of Dungarvan are horrendous. Mile 9 is utterly awful, a hill with a gradient that only impacts tall, elegant runners like myself. To make it worse you can see miles ahead. Mile 9 was a bad mile. I was fooled into thinking I was catching Barry Twohig when in fact I was not and was about to be passed out by the other Barry, Barry Donovan who stormed by on a mission.

10. What Number Did You Do?

I think that I did well to finish 22nd. That last little hill up to the finish is very stressful for someone like me who can’t run up hills, so I focused on staying in reasonable proximity to Tony Forristal which worked well in fending off the vicious dual attack of Tadhg and Michael McMahon. Once across the line I was delighted that ignoring the dashboard warning light had not led to an inability to walk or jog which is very important. I collected my nicely coloured Nike T-shirt, told Sergiu and Sean Doyle where to get Vaporfly 1s and walked/jogged back to the nice car park with Aidan. It looks like Dungarvan is becoming the 10 mile race, you can see why, it’s like the Valencia Marathon of 10 mile races.