It will be difficult to ignore 33,000 women running, jogging and walking their way around Dublin city this weekend. Combined with the interest generated by the Dublin v Kildare and Laois v Westmeath football championship double bill in Croke Park, it would be safe to say that the best place for any car this Sunday afternoon is anywhere but on the roads around the city centre.

Up by 4,000 entries on last year, the 1998 Women's Mini Marathon has become the biggest participation event on the sports calendar. It will wind its way around the south city centre, beginning at Fitzwilliam Street at 3 p.m. before heading down Holles Street, then out to UCD at Belfield and finally back to St Stephen's Green. Although a small minority of the entrants will be competing with a realistic hope of winning the event, the Adidas-sponsored 10km race looks like being tailor-made for Ireland's outstanding road runner, Catherina McKiernan. Any winner other than the Cavan athlete would represent a considerable surprise.

Favourite, no doubt, but with England's Lucy Wright on the entry list, McKiernan will, as usual, trust her own racing instincts and take nothing for granted. Wright is a sub-34 minute 10k runner, which takes her close to the expectations that most people would demand from a runner of McKiernan's calibre. But it probably is not quite enough to beat an Irish athlete who has been truly running to form.

In the Joe Doonan-McKiernan team, the sponsors have backed the strong favourites. McKiernan, with Doonan monitoring her training and schedules, won the race over an identical course last year in 32:31.00.

Ireland's Theresa Duffy and regular Irish road race winner Rosie Lambe took second and third places respectively in 34:12.00 and 35:00.00, giving the 1997 event a strong Irish flavour in the elite category. Lambe was also a winner of the race in 1993.

Last year was McKiernan's first real interest in Irish road racing and in retrospect it was confirmation of her intent to move away from the track. Since then her success in both the Berlin and London marathons has afforded her a deserved renaissance in popularity and success.

The event has been staged every year since 1983, when her sponsors at the time brought in American Kathy Shilly to add an exotic touch. Shilly became the first winner. But Irish runners have been to the fore since, and Patricia Griffin, winner in 1988 and 1989, will be looking for a good run outside the elite field while Ann Keenan Buckley, who was second in 1992 and was a member of Ireland's world cross country team in Marrakesh, Morroco this year when Sonia O'Sullivan won her two gold medals, is, at 36, still blossoming.