Mick Rice of Athenry AC wins Connemara 100

The Connemara 100 mile took place on Saturday the 14th of August and it was won by Mick Rice of Athenry AC in a time of 14 hours and 27 minutes. To put that into context, he was running at an average of roughly 8:30 minute per mile pace for the full 100 miles!!


That's equivalent of running nearly 4 marathons back to back with each one taking roughly 3h 45m. The mind boggles ;o)


Obviously, careful planning of hydration and feeding over such a distance is a major issue when you are trying to  avoid 'hitting the wall' and running out of energy. Other 'mere mortals' usually come across this problem when they are running the usual Marathon distance of 26.2 miles!


If confirmed, the time of 14 hours and 27 minutes would be a new Irish record for the 100 mile distance.


Cork runners may have come across Mick Rice last June when he ran in the Cork City Marathon as the 3 hour pacer.


Photos HERE


Mick Rice has a report on his blog HERE

A quick look at the Connemara 100.......

Someone mentioned this race to me last week and a few days later, I received a mail with some interesting links. So what exactly is the Connemara 100???

Most of you will know that a Marathon is 26.2 miles, usually the longest distance race for most people. While there are several of these in Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Belfast, etc), there is an Ultra-Marathon race every Spring in Connemara which is one and a half Marathons long........i.e. 39.2 miles. Up to recently, that was the longest race there was in Ireland until the 15th of August of this year when the Connemara 100 was held.........that's 100 miles, not 100 kms!

It's almost impossible to get your head around that kind of distance..........100 miles........almost 4 Marathons and the time limit is 30 hours! I can imagine it must be tough trying to run 2 Marathons but almost 4?!?!

The event was won by Mick Rice of Athenry AC who averaged around 9 min per mile..........i.e. he probably ran most if not all of it...........i.e. no walking. An incredible feat...

In second place was Joanne Fearon who is living in Cork. In fact, 3 of the first 5 finishers were women which seems a bit unusual. Joanne has an interesting detailed account of her race up on this website.

The full results of the Connemara 100 can be seen HERE.

There is a small photo gallery HERE.

100 miles in less than 30 hours...........do you think you could do it???

Comments......??