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28 November, 2009

2001 Leinster League
Maulin - Report by Douglas Barry
With a dank muggy evening hanging windless and excellent for soft targets, he wheeled through the cloudy sky. Sighting his objective below, he dived downwards at the limit of his speed weaving through the rest of his clustering squadron. Keeping above the reach of the defences, he banked and slipped in through the gap hotly pursued by his fellows. Aiming at the prize, he was stopped short by a bang and spiralled out of control to impact on the ground.
That's the problem with mountain runners, they fight back, especially the slow ones like me. I don't like flies and I certainly can't outrun them. On a steep sheltered treelined slope like the vicious forest ride that goes up the side of Maulin, they hang in clouds waiting for the sweaty bodies to heave into view. Then they attack in waves, hunting for those precious globules of perspiration. The leading runners have some hope of getting clear of them, but someone like me who managed to start over 5 minutes late - and is extremely slow to boot - hasn't a chance.
There I was alone and with what seemed like a thousand flies dive-bombing me and me only. I was the only food around. The rest of the race had cleared off into the distance led by Simon Fairmaner who had an excellent run over the 5 mile course to win his fifth race of the Leinster League, and is now just one race away from clinching the title for 2001. The Englishman has had only one reversal in his six outings when Hugh McLindon just beat him by inches at the Scalp, but Simon reversed the placings the following week. Hugh didn't turn out at Maulin, and now needs to win all remaining three races to keep in the hunt.
Behind Simon, junior international Seosamh O'Muircheartaigh had an excellent run to hold off former senior international Bob Lawlor, first veteran Simon Walters, Peter O'Farrell, and Gerry Lalor to take second place with less than a minute covering the five of them. Beth McCluskey took the women's race by a clear margin of five minutes from Una May with Roisin McDonnell taking third. The slippery going on the climb ensured that Veronica Colleran's 1991 record of 39 minutes dead stayed inviolate.
Me? I'm running slower, but reckon I killed a record number of flies this year....