The Young and the Old

04 July, 2024 - Barry Murray

After having to cancel doing The Paps race at the last minute I was eager to see what race I could do next. I saw Warrenscourt was back on the calendar again, on a Wednesday evening and not too much of a camel trek for me. I see it hadn't been raced since 2018 at which I had one of my few race wins, so 6yrs later + a wife and 3 x kids, I was interested to see what kind of condition the engine was in.

Leaving Tralee after work with a jacket on, cool wind and light rain, 12C, I was cursing the weather again. 1.15hr of a drive and I step out to a pleasant 17C at the race venue reminding me again of how schizo this weather is. Not used to being so early for a race (I arrived at 6pm) I was able to chat to RD Brian and the volunteers instead of rushing to get the gear on and get a quick warm up in.

I ended up having too much time and was finished my 30min warm up by 7.10 so just had to keep moving so that the body temp didn't drop too much. A quick look at the race list and the lads pointed out who their money was on this time for the race win. A young lad called Finn Yore was lining up having done very well recently racing for the Irish u20 team in Annecy. I didn't recognise too many other faces but knew there would be a couple of fast local folk too. RD Brian counted us down and it was a fast start on a narrow path. Unsurprisingly , young lad Finn flew off, with me next but it wasn't long before 2-3 passed me with a few fast feet just behind me. The course was slightly different to the one 6yrs ago but followed lots of the same paths, hard pact stoney forest trails... the type the likes of Mikey Fry aren't fans of. I was just happy to be able to reach the high gears and stay amongst the front pack. It was fun as aside from Finn who vanished off into the distance, there was 5-6 of us within a few yards of each other.
There was a fairly steep climb up one of the fire roads and then a wooded section of single track where you had to dodge a lot of tree branches. It was the only section I was able to pass Kealy Tideswell on as once we hit the hard runnable paths she was able to put the foot down.

The last 2km was fast and more or less downhill and I was lacking maybe a bit of speed that I had 6yrs ago. Lost a place to another youngish lad Steven and came in 7th. Got a picture taken with young Finn to hand over the crown to him and I'm reminded he's 30yrs my junior ! Great to see proper youth at these IMRA races though as us older statemen shouldn't be taking places on the podium anymore. However, maybe with the focus so much on Equality these days, we should have handicaps for members with partners and kids. I'm thinking 30sec per kid and 30-60sec per partner (depending on the level of stress they cause). So given I have 3 kids and an understanding wife, that would give me a handicap of 2mins. Looking at the results, that would put my time at 27min14... 2nd place, I'd take that. Maybe I'll propose this to the committee , I'm sure they wouldn't mind, we're all in this together.

Great to get out for a Wednesday evening blast in Munster and have just as much fun as the Leinster folk ;) Thanks again to RD Brian and crew for a well marked fun course.