Eamonn Hodge

13 May, 2010

What a great race! Some great views which for once I could actually raise my eyes a little bit and glance around instead of my eyes being glued to the ground in front of me.

As usual the first 10-15 seconds went well before we hit the uphill. Immediately I slowed up more than usual and was passed by lots of people. Recently I think I've judged my opening pace fairly well and managed to maintain my position within about 5 places. Today was different. The Tibradden course is one of the longest in the Wednesday night Leinster League but it is one of the most runnable. This can be a curse though. I quite enjoy the steep parts of races such as Prince William's Seat because it gives me a chance to rest (in a perverse kind of way) compared to the flat or gentle uphill terrain that we had this evening.

John Ahern, Gareth Little, Alan Ayling and Jeff Fitzsimons (among many others!) all passed me very early on the ascent and I was only able to claw my way past Gareth when we got to a flatter section. It was slightly demoralising to look far, far into the distance up towards Fairy Castle and see how far ahead the fast guys were already. Tried to keep up with Jeff Fitzsimons who had overtaken about four people just in front of me but it was proving hard. There were two people marshalling (mocking?) at Fairy Castle and one of them turned out to be Rene Borg of Crusaders Hill Running Circuits fame. I replied to his cheery "hello Eamonn" with an ancient curse which should hopefully result in a pox on his family. This is the man who lead five of us on hill circuits around Kilmashogue on Monday just gone. It didn't seem to matter to Niall Heffernan who seemd to keep good high-knees form breezing past me on the uphill. I passed Alan coming up to Fairy Castle and Cormac O'Ceallaigh on the fairly flat part after the descent off Fairy Castle. This state of play lasted all of about 60 seconds. Cormac overtook me again and stayed ahead for the remainder of the race. Alan overtook me on the return leg and I was under pressure from another couple of runners behind me. Lost a couple of places on the relatively benign flat rocks which seemed quite intimidating to me. I don't know, guess my legs were a bit tired at this point. Melanie Earwaker hit the deck here she revealed to me later. I had traded places several times with Peter Kernan and I had to really push it to stay ahead of him as we both sprinted for the finish line. Ronan Hickey (my old rival from last year) was uncomfortably close on this race. I'll be interested to see the results.

I was expecting to see Karen Duggan and Rosalind Hussey fly by me on the descent. Karen descended Croagh Patrick 4 minutes quicker than me and Rosalind raised a cloud of dust as she blazed by me in the distinctly non-dusty grassy descent of Ben Gorm. It must not have been technical enough or suicidal enough for them to zoom by me. Come on Duggan - bring your A game next time! :-) Although both of these girls were beaten by Caitriona Nic Caba who may have had her first IMRA win?!

At the top of the men's field Barry Minnock won (boring!) and he's off to Barcelona to run in the European Masters this weekend. Kevin English came second even though he only dips in and out of mountain running and managed to hold Peter O'Farrell to third place.

The Brew Crew guy provided us with great coffee after the race and it became very cold very quickly (when you're not running!). Annalise (sp?) came to her second ever hill run brandishing a tin of selected buns and cakes which she was selling for charity. I got a Rice Krispie bun made with Mars Bars I suspect - nice and chewy. None of this cheapo made with brown coloured cooking "chocolate". The good stuff. Avoca café style. (I managed to wrest a second bun from the maws of hungry mountain runners later in the pub).

Car pooling seemed to work very well this evening as myself and Feilim Guinan tried to bribe people to get into our car at the Merry Ploughboy. Lollipops didn't work though. Fionnula eventually accepted our kind offer not realising she was our key to entry to the Tibradden car park. Later on in the pub (after a pitifully small portion of risotto (should have gone with the fish and chips)) I think John Ahern, John Shiels and myself may have bored the proverbial pants off Cliona (Cliodhna?) and Tara with our war stories from Croagh Patrick and Ben Gorm. These triathletes are dipping their toes into mountain running to build their running strength for triathlons. Very soon I think the mountain runs will take precedence. Don't get me wrong, triathlons are great in their way. And you're not mocked for wearing sexy 2XU compression socks the way you are at mountain runs! (Nunan, Hanney, McGurren).

Thanks to Paul Mahon for race directing and to all the volunteers who made it all run smoothly. Colin Doyle I think had a fairly long night as parking marshal and damn was it cold up there.

Is it just me or is there a *lot* more girls coming to these races?! Long may it continue! (by the way I'm SWM, GSOH, enjoys long walks on the beach and long runs in the hills....)

EDIT: I have the journalistic integrity of a tabloid hack. The female results are as follows:
1. Rosalind Hussey
2. Karen Duggan
3. Caitriona Nic Caba

In my defence the results were not up last night and when Paul Mahon was announcing the winners I thought he was announcing them in reverse order. Rosalind Hussey was gone and received her prize before the pub, Duggan in second (at least I got that bit right) and Nic Caba in third. Apologies for that.

Marian O'Reilly is under suspicion of having abnormally high testosterone levels. Check out the picture below...

http://imra.ie/photos/view/id/40644/

Rene Borg

13 May, 2010

TEAM

MEN
1. Rathfarnham WSAF 9 (1 Barry Minnock, 3 Peter O'Farrell, 5 Aaron O'Donohue)
2. Sli Cualann 51 (4 Cormac Conroy, 15 Martin Francis, 32 Cormac O'Ceallaigh)
3. Boards AC 76 (16 Mick Hanney, 29 John Ahern, 31 Jeff Fitzsimons)
4. GEN 89 (8 David Healy, 37 Alan Ayling, 44 Ted McCormack)
5. UCD 135 (21 Zoran Skrba, 22 Brian Caulfield, 92 Philip De Chazal)
6. Crusaders AC 147 (28 Gavan Doherty, 57 Oran Murphy, 62 Brian Linton)
7. Setanta 186 (36 Shane Enright, 47 Andreas Kusch, 103 Sean Hassett)
8. Clonliffe Harriers 214 (9 Greg Byrne, 55 Dermot Murphy, 150 Pol O'Murchu)
9. The Kyrgyz Freedom Alliance 240 (65 Eoin Hardiman, 77 Daniel Hardiman, 98 Brian Conroy)
10. Sportsworld 470 (145 Tom McLean, 153 John Fitzgerald, 172 Charlie O'Connell)
11. Raheny Shamrocks 528 (168 David Brady, 173 Lunar McGrath, 187 Mike Gomm)

WOMEN
1. Crusaders AC 23 (4 Susan Seager, 8 Emma Boland, 11 Lornie O'Dwyer)
2. Duhac 55 (1 Rosalind Hussey, 5 Mirjam Allik, 49 Annelies Pletsers)
3. Sli Cualann 80 (18 Aisling Renshaw, 20 Liz Ryan, 42 Maria O'Rourke)