Rene Borg

24 July, 2012

TEAM RESULTS

MEN

1. UCD 40 (12 Zoran Skrba, 13 Eoin Syron, 15 Niall Fox)
2. Rathfarnham WSAF 58 (1 Peter O'Farrell, 4 Greg Byrne, 53 Archie O'Donnell)
3. Sli Cualann 60 (8 Ben Mooney, 16 Rafael Salazar, 36 Martin Francis)
4. Crusaders AC 61 (6 Jason Kehoe, 22 Vincent McGuinness, 33 Oran Murphy)
5. Boards AC 68 (5 Eoin Keith, 19 John Ahern, 44 Laurence Colleran)
6. Raheny Shamrocks 380 (114 Brian Christensen82, 128 Ciaran McGrath, 138 David Brady)

Archie O'Donnell

20 July, 2012

Paul Larkins took some excellent photo's at the finish
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76314985@N02/sets/72157630643879388/

Peter O'Farrell

19 July, 2012

208 runners, 40 volunteers. Some of the volunteers didn't show but that's one volunteer for every 5 runners..

At the weekend there might be 40 runners and Vivian plus one summit marshall. Tonight a 6km up and down, Saturday a 10km up and down.

2 sides of IMRA and when you realise you will see the same lads helping tonight then racing Mweelrea on Saturady you realise IMRA has something special going on. I'm not trying to claim it's unique, the BHAA amongst others also have a great community but the end of league dash up the sugarloaf followed by the (futile) race to beat Eoin Keith to the queue for the burgers is a fine tradition that hopefully will continue for many years.

No TomErik this year so I looked around for other raiders and settled on Tristin and a couple of Raheny lads in sprinters shorts, at the very least the Raheny lads probably have some maurauding viking blood in them. 2 men in black proved to be the early bolters and had a good lead heading into the single track. Martin MacDonald was going well in 3rd and a steady stream of slipping and sliding humanity was following with various degrees of either panache or pain.
Onto the big climb and sure enough Tristin is stuck to my back, I kept expecting him to go past but in fairness he has a new born baby girl (congratulations) and I was hoping he was a little more tired then usual :)
I presume if he didn't need his 7th race to wrap up the league (more congratulations! ) he would have stayed home.
Just as you are at your most vunerable, at the top of the gully after a lung busrsting, leg trembling climb another fine IMRA tradition occurs - John Shiels happy smiley head and 10kg of camera swim into view and start snapping away. The wind at the summit was pretty cool, Greg Byrne was telling us his T-shirt lifted completely over his head.
On the descent I just tried to be relaxed, I knew the likes of Greg and Bernard would descend well and I was kinda hoping Tristin wouldn't and maybe block them a little bit on the tight single track!
All in all another amaxingly well organised race, for 7 euro!

For the second week in a row the performance of the day goes to Jenny MacAuley, simply incredible running.

Angus Tyner

19 July, 2012

My legs are tired...and I didn’t even do the race! I was summit marshal along with Tamas who marked the course. I was at the top in time to see the race start and we watched the progression of the race along the eastern flank and then the ascent up the south side. In this grandstand view we were sheltered from the strong westerly wind.

As Peter O’Farrell with Tristian Trute on his heels were starting the final ascent up the western side we took our positions...at least tried to. The wind was making life quite difficult! It is very important that the descending runners do not descend into ascending runners climbers...and also important I didn’t over balance into either. This we pulled off without incident and the summit turn around went off very smoothly.

Tamas and myself demarked on way down, Tamas headed south and I went north following the race route. About 2/3rds way down I caught up with the last participant. (I’ll call her S). She was on the phone! When she finished we chatted, and as part of this I learned that she was on the phone to her friend (I’ll call her V) who was behind us somewhere having apparently taken a wrong turn!! Oh Oh!

V didn’t know where she was, but she had climbed another hill? I decided to do u–turn with S to get back up to plateau that we could be seen. Then S phoned V...can you see us?...No.
At this stage it dawned on me that we have a situation that needs taken seriously. I told S to stay put and I headed down to finish where Richard & Tamas were looking as if they had a BBQ to attend :) I explained the situation, gave the race numbers of S & V to laptop crew. Richard, Tamas and myself (after removing my summit clothing) returned to S. Still no sign of V. Richard had a good chat to V to try establish where on the mountain she was with the conclusion that she was probably on north end. The instruction to V was to climb to top...there’s not many tops out there. At this stage Richard was required back at pub. I took the Hi-vis and Tamas, S and myself climbed to col at northern side of main summit, near where race turned right. Still no sign of V and despite talking to her, we were no wiser as to where she actually was. Dusk was starting and S was falling behind. We sent S back down to finish and to pub. Tamas and myself continued down other side of col to where a main path was but still no sign of V. V was apparently still climbing and she thought she climbing the main summit. She sounded that she was certainly labouring but then she had been on the go for 2 hours...mind you it was more than 4 hours for Tamas who was doing his 3rd ascent!

At his stage Tamas and myself decided to split. Not ideal but there were 2 summits, the main one and the one to south. I went towards main summit. I rang V and informed her to continue looking out for Hi-vis or the red top that Tamas was wearing.

When V reached summit she rang back to confirm that she had reached the top and that it was definitely the main Sugarloaf summit. I told her to get towards edge and look down and we finally got a visual of each other. This was at about 21.50!

I rang Tamas to confirm where V was. I continued my way up and met her at base of summit path and we walked/ran down to the Glencormick Inn. Her legs were cramping up towards the end...she’d been on the go nearly 3 hours, fortunately a good place for the cramping to start and not 30 minutes earlier!

So where did V go wrong. This was her first IMRA race. She was near back of the race, in last 3 and not in sight of anyone else. She went straight on the wide grassy path at a right turn on the col. The straight on route had tape across...she thought this was the finish line! Then having "finished" she went to look for the rest of the racers and climbed the next hill. I’m not sure where she went after that, but she ended up on eastern side of main mountain from where she eventually made it back to summit.

So I’ve been thinking how this could be avoided. I think the white right/left signs are great. They can be seen from a distance and indicates clearly a turn. Perhaps more these should be made up? And straight on signs would be good post corner or at path crossings. They are usually easy to put out and collect

Having done 12k run during afternoon, my legs were tired...but not as tired as V who climbed the summit twice in her debut race. Fair play to her for getting herself in a position to be found.

All’s well that ends well.

Mikey Fry

19 July, 2012

Jakers no report from brian o'murchu this week was very sad had enjoyed his reports over that last few races probaly due to that he wasn't running last night..... You missed a super fast up and down thingy going on giant walking ferns ticking and tripping up the odd loony runner thankfully I remained on all fours which was needed at the top which I think I actual turned into wolf which proved to b the way up......my top remained on just about at the summit well done to the lads for holding on nice breeze to cool down....down down down with eyes closed and finish line was there yes yes yes breathing normal again thanks again to everyone who helped out super race yummy food at the bbq thanks lads....and one of my favourite races gooday:)
Well done to lads for finding the missing runner:)