Operation Transformation 5K, Phoenix Park, Saturday 20th February 2016
(With thanks to Sinead Webb for obliging us with this report to give us a flavour of the Operation Transformation 5K. Sinead travelled with Claire Clifford and Olywen Read.)
An announcement was made last Tuesday after training that the club had a few numbers if anyone wanted to do the Operation Transformation run on Saturday morning. Having run in this fun-run a few times over the years, sure why not. The atmosphere is such a buzz and there is cheering and encouragement from all angles.
This fun run caters for everyone, just get out and run, jog or walk. Buggies are welcomed along with children. A great family event.
Weather for the morning started off dry, hurray, but by the time we got into the car, the rain had started. This was the first formal run of the year for the three of us and Olywen’s first time running as a Dunboyne member!
Parked the car and walked up to the start with only about 10 mins to spare. Dropped the bags through the muck fest & then headed back to hear the booming voice of Kathryn Thomas over the loud speaker. There was a quick warm up and luckily we were up with the runners so started off pretty quick.
We passed out each of the contestants as most were at walking pace but each had encouragement & support along the way. It was quite congested until we got to the lovely Furry Glen, a nice downhill. For the uphill, Claire was just in front of Karl Henry, so was in the perfect position to hear his motivation!
Once the 4km mark passed, you could still see the walkers with buggies heading down towards the Furry Glen with happy smiles on faces, rain and all. Up Furze Road to the finish line Olywen and I went and had a little sprint finish to make sure we got in under the 30 minute mark. We were very happy with 29.12. Just behind us was Claire with a PB of 30.55, well done!
Off we went to collect the goodie bag, the RTE Guide and some toothpaste tubes from Dunnes Stores! We were all getting cold from the rain so back we walked to the car. Not a bad start to a Saturday morning and a few goodies thrown in.
Didn’t meet up with anyone else unfortunately due to the weather we didn’t hang around, hopefully all who participated enjoyed this fun event which was well ran.
Editor’s note: Niamh Fahy was also on her first formal run of the year, and with her good running genes it goes without saying that she had a super outing; cousin Fionnuala had better watch out. Richard O’Brien, who joined us from the C25K programme last year, has become one of our most dedicated trainers, and already has the Raheny 5 miler under his belt, so 5K was never going to faze him.
Mother-daughter duo Maria Hughes and Sarah Ward were also making their first 5K appearance of 2016. Fit4Youth’s Sarah paced Maria for the first 4 kilometres before getting down to business to finish 2 minutes ahead of Maria. Sarah is grounded for a week but she says it was worth it. Congrats ladies!
As we have no way to check on clubmembers, no doubt we have missed a few people. If so, let us know in the comments. Well done to everyone who took part!
