Shanagarry 5 mile

Another Race close to home tonight - the Shanagarry 5 mile, second race in the Ballycotton Summer series. And no prizes for guessing where I finished, yip 8th again! Managed to beat a few of the guys who beat me in Ballyandreen but as the overall standings are based on cumulative time rather than finishing position I don't think I made enough time to move up too much on the leader board for the series. Race went well - the pace was quite handy for the first 2 miles which were flat so there was a big bunch of us together. Soon after the marker the leaders put down the boot a bit as we started climbing, I just kept going steady maintaining my effort and was with two other guys who like me were cast off from the leading group. We stayed together untill about 3.25 miles where the course dropped down a steep hill and were passed by two guys, one of whom was my mate who I raced shoulder to shoulder with in the 5K last week. He does a lot of hill running so descending quickly was always going to be his forte. As soon as the course went up again I managed to get onto his shoulder and I was back in a group of three having dropped one of the original posse on the descent, the other guy who had passed had kept the hammer down and got away from us. As we crested the last hill with about 3/4 of a mile to go Donie Walsh told us that we were in 8th, 9th and 10th, & at that stage I was just hanging on so was settling for 10th place. I managed to get some air into my lungs on the slight downhill into the finish and with 300m to go I manoveured myself to the side of the 2 lads and just gave it everything and just about managed to get over the line before them. Legs had felt a bit dead on the last climb and I was wondering why but it was only afterward it dawned on me that I probably was n't fully recovered after the session tuesday night so I won't worry too much about it.
Splits were n't too bad considering the hilliness of the last 3 miles (5.19/5.31/5.52/5.36/5.30). 27.49 total (PB!)
Wed: Rest
Thur: Warmup:3miles Race:5miles Cooldown:1.8miles