What a weekend. the results from the various races were quite remarkable even by TTracers standards. I am going to begin with the Maurice Mullin Half and Ultra . The Half was a trial for the Irish team for interceltic international which is to be held in France in June. Tom Lupton produced one of his customary fast finishes to take the 3rd and final place for selection by a mere 4 seconds. Congratulations to Tom for making the team. In contrast , Liz Wheeler despite running the qualifying time criteria just missed out on automatic selection by finishing in 4th place. However fingers crossed that Liz will still be selected. Also competing were Ciaran Alyward in 7th place , Gareth Little 25th, Brian McGuickan ( 1st O/50) and Kate O’Mahony 34th in the women’s race.
In the Ultra race Leah Benson knocked almost one hour off her 2018 time with 6:04.35 for 9th O/40 and Rob Priestman finished the 50k in 6;31.
Also on yesterday was the K Club 10k where we had a very large contingent taking part. Our first home was the evergreen Des Kennedy in 4th overall ( 1st O/50) and knocking 2 minutes off his pb with a 31.24 run. PB stands for personal best and I am only putting it against their names if I am fairly sure they got it but I guarantee there is probably a couple more. Next after Des was Fergal Whitty ( 2nd O/40 – 32.41 PB) , Brendan Murphy (33.12) Des Tremble ( 33.25 – 2nd O/45) Phil Kilgannon ( 34.08) James Hoare ( 34.09) Derek Taylor ( 34.22 PB) Paddy Walsh ( 34.29 PB) Alasdair Brown ( 34.30 PB) Ed Hayes ( 34.34 PB) Sean McCann ( 34.38 PB) John McAuley ( 35.32 ) Alan Bernie (35.50 PB) Mark O’Connor (36.00 PB) Will Byrne (36.09) Paraic Shortall (37.19 PB) Brian Kitson (37.36 PB) Andrea Talpo (38.23) Conor Keating (39.12 PB) Conor Kinnane (39.18) Malika Hammani ( 39.59 – 1st O40 PB), Sonya McConnon ( 40.02 – 2nd O/35) Andy Davies ( 40.10 – 2nd O/55) Michael Gygax ( 40.22 – 3rd O/55) Tomas Dunne (40.18) Sorcha McCann ( 40.49) Alan Jones (41.29) John Fennelly ( 41.32) Johnny Finnegan (42.18) Maurico Neto (42.57 PB) Sean Donegan ( 43.26) and Diane McNevin (49.08) . Its worth noting that Derek , Paddy, Alasdair , Ed and Sean all train together in group 2 .They were all at the session on Tuesday and each of them ran a pb yesterday. I am sure that they would concur that this healthy competition helped them to run as well as they did. Therefore , it might be a good idea that each group should pencil in a race for you to all do together and see if you get a similar result.
Today we had the Mallow 10 mile were our two representatives both finished 2nd overall. Rory O’Connor in the men’s ran 51.28 and yes another Pb and Linda Byrne 2nd in the women’s in 59.55. Finally Conor Nolan ran 1 hour 40 for the Wicklow Half Marathon.
