The NI and Ulster 10,000m Championships were held in pleasant conditions at the Mary Peters' Track at the start of June, at the beginning of the Team Trophy meeting.
Twenty five laps of a 400m track would seem pretty gruelling to most, and so it proved to be in the women's race. Emily Haggard Kearney showed up, two of the six entered didn't, and so there were four. Emily was perfectly content to follow the pace for most of the race, which became a case of "last woman standing!" By the time she crossed the line in a time of 34:46.53 she was the only one left in the race! Not quite how she would have envisaged winning the gold medal, but as she had shown the previous week when running low 15 minutes for 5K on the road, there was unlikely to have been any other winner.
The men's race which had taken place beforehand, saw Conan McCaughey of North Belfast Harriers go off hard from the gun. He blitzed round in a time of 31:20.24. Stephen Connelly of Annadale Striders claimed the silver medal in 32:53.20, he took had been a lone figure for the majority of the race.
Behind him there had been more of a tussle for the bronze medal before Mark Cornett (Portadown native but running for North Belfast Harriers) broke clear and sprinted off with half a mile (two laps) remaining. The 34 year old had actually read the lap counter displayed for Conan and thought he had only 400m left. Thankfully on realising he had another lap to go, he managed to keep running, albeit at a slower pace (and with a few glances over his shoulder) to claim his first senior track medal in a time of 34:00.34
