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28 November, 2009

With the old Dublin Sports Hotel in Kilternan demolished and our usual car park a building site, the committee pulled all the stops out to organise a new car park, a new course and an extra warm-up jog to the start for the 157 odd souls that ventured out last night.
Thankfully the weather was warm & dry (although overcast), with dry conditions underfoot. Parking was in a private field about 1 mile from the start - Jane & Graham had gone into the Texaco garage on Monday looking for anyone that had a field that a bunch of hill runners could park in, and the enterprising young man behind the counter volunteered his back garden at ?2 a car!
The new course was designed by Joe Lalor and started from the barrier at the track into the Lead Mines chimney, cut South into the forest paralleling the power lines before looping left then right to approach Carrickgolligan summit from the east instead of the usual north, avoiding the old bottleneck at the base of the hill. From the summit, runners went back down over the familiar route, leaving the chimney on their right before going back through Barnaslingan woods car park. At the car park, Joe had opted for a clockwise loop of the forest, allowing the downhill junkies the old joy of coming down through steep forest in near darkness...followed by a novel slightly uphill finish back at Barnaslingan car park.
Although well marked, a few did manage to stray...Patrick Casey did admit however that he ran over a piece of tape across a path on the ground, and ignored the flag going up the right way because ?everyone else was doing it?. Despite this, I suspect Joe?s new course will be here to stay as the feedback was positive - ?enjoyable? as Peter O?Farrell put it.
Paul Nolan was the overall winner, beating his regular competitors Kevin Keane and Eoin Keith into their familiar 2nd and 3rd places. To be fair to Kevin, he did cycle from Drumcondra (?a nice warm-up?), and had come a respectable 3rd in Sunday?s Carrauntoohil race, but he said that when himself and Paul hit the car park for the last loop of the forest, Paul pulled away from him to open the final gap to 40 odd seconds. First place in the league looks wrapped up for Paul, but a first place for Kevin doesn?t look impossible (he?s been second on every Arup League race so far!) .
The Ladies? race was more clear-cut, with Beth McCluskey (also recovering from Carrauntoohil) coming in comfortably ahead of Becky Quinn. The battle for 3rd place was far closer, with regular 3rd placer Hazel Thompson being beaten by 2 seconds on the last uphill by 1st F40, Roisin McDonnell. The youthful Gerry Lalor held Martin Francis off to win the M40s, while El Presidente (Jane Porter) ambled around to take the first F50.
The M50s battle seemed a foregone conclusion with Henny not there, and Joe being grateful he?d opted to mark the course after his Carrauntoohil efforts, but Bruce Shenker had a tough time keeping Noel Coldrick off to win the M50s by 18 seconds. At prizegiving, the M60s was awarded to Brendan Doherty, but after a Stewards? enquiry Eddie Hughes was given the honour, while Mike Gomm and Kay Bent took the M70s and F60s respectively. Special mention was given to James Alexander (M14) who not only completed all of Wednesday?s course, but also managed all of Cahir mountain the Sunday before that...a young man to watch out for!
Thanks to all the helpers who made a very enjoyable evening possible (Izzy, Colleen, Turlough, Brendan, Bruce, Barry, Joe, Nora, Laura and other usual suspects).