This race deserves a race report.

05 February, 2024 - Andrew Hanney

What a difference a week makes. One day I’m at the finish line of Howth talking to RD Laurence and moaning about why Mullaghmeen is so long for a spring race, a week later and you know, if you want to measure the success of race, its not by the numbers that attend, it’s the smiles on the faces of people after the finish.
What a treat this race it. Is it tough, well it is yes, its unrelenting, its testing, it’ll test your will, your muscle fibre, your stamina. At all times you have the fear that the next hill is coming.
Taking a step back from the course, you have a great local community coming together to put on a race… it was surreal really, and it is a great example of how local community, the local MTB heads and IMRA can cooperate and it all just works.
The race plan was not to go out to fast, the brain kept saying you’ll be out here a while. Of course, I’m also thinking, the RD says its handy for 4k….. so maybe make them that the fast running kms and walk the rest (joke). I remember at around the 7k or 8k mark, and we have descended a lot and I remember Laurence’s route description about being at the lowest point of the course with an ‘oh no’. No truer words were written. For the second half of the course myself and Richard Leahy passed each other 6 or 7 times… he was a few seconds ahead of me at the 10.5km mark, and I wasn’t that worried, thinking there was another km left. But as luck would have it, we ran out of course at the 11km mark and there would be no catching him. Well done that man.
Well done to Laurence and all the helpers you put on a great event and well worth the journey. But don’t make it any longer ok