We have lots of people to thank, our participants who we’ve mentioned already, our sponsors, whom we will thank in a separate post, but we should possibly reserve our biggest words of praise for those who made it happen on the day. Hosting a race of this magnitude is an enormous effort, with planning starting in mid-2015.

Rather than praising everyone individually and letting you know of their individual contributions, we’d like to thank the various teams that made the race happen as well as the help we received from outside of the Club.

Firstly we’d our race organisers, who yet again delivered the perfect race. Thanks guys, your attention to detail means that our race remains ‘The Short Race with the Big Reputation’. Feedback since has been phenomenal. We attracted and catered for one of the best fields in a road race in Ireland in recent times.

Our ‘PRO Team’ yet again pushed the boundaries of what is humanly possible in a working month, our race was promoted excellently and our programme, we’re not ashamed to say, is a work of art. If you haven’t opened it yet, please do, it’s a highly entertaining read. We’ll publish snippets of if for your perusal when things quieten down a bit in a few days.

The sponsorship drive was left to a very small team and it is tough and thankless work, but the figure raised was staggering yet again this year, up again on 2015’s race.

Our Juvenile team hosted 170+ aspiring 4 mile winners in their three age group races. Along with this they filled the races full of our own young Club athletes, filling podium places in all races.

Before the big day we’d a flyer drive, with the Flyer team hitting every post box in Dunboyne and every road race within the Pale since January.

Our race day set up team was out at dawn putting out signage, cones, barriers and gantries.

Our registration and timing team’s attention to detail meant that there were no errors on the day, not an easy job. All results were swiftly delivered post race for the presentation before 4pm.

Our start and finish area volunteers and marshals out on the course ensured that all the kids and adults were running safely and the traffic flowed freely through the diversions in place.

The Gardai and the Civil Defence teams were in place at critical points to ensure crowd and participant safety.

Dunboyne Motor Club again came up trumps and led and flanked the runners through and passed the many junctions on the course.

The BHAA were on hand to help out at the start again this year.

Feidhlim Kelly, Race MC, provided top class commentary throughout the day entertaining everyone with insightful coverage.  Our PA set up crew meant everyone was able to know exactly what was going on.

Our catering team’s numbers we huge, there were 600 finishers and far more besides to cater for. We must thank them; they fed the runners, their families and the volunteers. Probably the biggest task of the day. On that note we would like to thank those who baked for the race, a request went out and it seems like everyone spent their Saturday afternoon baking for the 4 Mile.

We were entertained in the hall afterwards by our excellent local Comhaltas group, many of whom ran the race!

Our goody bag fillers and t-shirt team were extremely busy all Sunday morning.

The Community Centre answered our every need, opening whenever we required them to truck in or out race materials. The race would not be possible without this venue.

Dunboyne AC benefit from an excellent working relationship with the Scouts, we’d like to thank them for their help for the race on Sunday.

The local and national media were excellent to us in terms of race promotion and support and the locals, as usual came out to support in massive numbers giving our own runners in particular a massive lift.

Our Club photographers took some fantastic pictures of both juvenile and adults races, and we’ve some great video coverage too.

Our members were particularly well decked out on Sunday, well done to the Club Kit team for delivering over the past couple of years.

The less than fun post race clear up had to be done long after the buzz subsided and yet again it was finished without delay on Sunday evening, in plenty of time ahead of a trip to the pub!

We can’t list all of the people who played a role on the side-lines during the day for fear of leaving some out but hosting a race of that magnitude requires many, many hands, and volunteers were not shy about contributing this year which is great to see.

Along with those we had so many of our own 109 runners who played some part before or after the race, contributing sponsorship, baked goods, helping out with tasks before and after the race.

We are so so appreciative of all your efforts, thank you all!