Our marathoners did us proud in this years Dublin City Marathon held in extremely difficult conditions on the 31st of October. Pride of place goes to Patrice Dockery, 1st in the Women’s Wheelchair race, Caroline Dobbyn 3rd in Ladies National Marathon and Eddie Coughlan with his 2:39 time.
It was a very difficult day for marathon running, thankfully the very strong winds of earlier on in the weekend had eased somewhat on the marathon morning however, there was a torrential downpour which had the marathon runners soaked to the skin before they were set underway by the starters gun. The conditions were truly awful. The rain continued throughout the morning and it was really only after the first ten miles of the race that conditions improved slightly.
Despite the weather however there were classy performances by our athletes, our men were led home by Eddie Coughlan in a superb 2:39:38. Eddie had gone through the half way stage in 1:18:44 and continued this strong pace to finish 38th finisher overall and well up in the national marathon held in conjunction with the Dublin City Marathon.
Clonliffe’s Patrice Dockery was once again the winner of the women’s wheelchair section in a time of 2:34:29.
Our first lady home was Clonliffe new signing, Caroline Dobbyn, who finished in a superb 2:51:35 to be 6th lady home and 88th overall and unbelievably claiming individual ladies bronze in the National Marathon in her first race for Clonliffe Harriers.
Caroline led home our ladies team and was ably backed up by Aisling Coppinger who recorded 3:15:57 and Bronagh Ni Bhrian with 3:23:43. UnfortunatelyErin McVeigh had to pull out at around the 17 mile mark. Details are not yet available of the ladies team’s placing in the National Marathon as of yet – seewww.athleticsireland.ie.
Our second man home was Maurice McCrohan in 2:56:41 (a P.B.), Jeremy Walsh, in his first marathon, was the third Clonliffe man home in 3:06:59 withPaddy Tuite fourth in 3:10:17.
Stephen Byrne was going well until about 21 miles when he had a problem and this hampered his progressed and he finished somewhat disappointed with his time of 3:10:29 (a P.B.), undoubtedly the work which Stephen put into his marathon preparations will pay off in the long run and quicker times lie ahead.
Kieran Murphy in his marathon debut ran a superb 3:13.
Brendan Buck running his second marathon in three weeks – having ran 3:04 in Cardiff in September, found this is not the ideal preparation for Dublin as he suffered considerably in the second half finishing in 3:21:55.
Next up was Pat Devitt running very steadily to record 3:25:15.
Our other three debut marathoners were Erwin De Wilde in 3:33:13, Michael Scully 3:34:59 and Michael Hogan 3:42:59.
Tony Kiernan ran 4:23:36 and completing his 26th Dublin City Marathon was the Colonel, Frank Behan, in 6:01:48.
Tremendous performances by one and all.
The Dublin City Marathon was won by Dymtro Osadchy of the Ukraine in a fast time of 2:13:14, just six seconds outside of last years record time. Second was N. Molema (South Africa) 2:14:08 and third O. Belhovets (Russia) 2:14:24. The women’s race was won by Zinaida Semenova of Russia (running in the F40 category) in 2:32:5 from L. Zousko, also of Russia in 2:33:25 with A. Kibor (Kenya) third in 2:34:57.