from BHAA There was a very nice race in Dunboyne last Tuesday night for the Government Services 5 mile road race with over 240 finishers. Conditions were pleasant and the course was fairly flat and quite fast.
Local man Rory McDonnell (Sports Locker) had a comfortable win, ahead of Padraig Mac Criostail (Dept of Justice) and Ronan Hartnett (Garda). Caitriona Jennings (PriceWaterhouseCoopers) ran a tremendous race in finishing as first woman (16th overall), followed at quite a distance by Orla Gormley (Aer Lingus) and Kate Dunne (Childcare).
A notable performance was Paddy Mangan (Dublin Bus) who was first M50 in 6th place. It was good to see Sandra Armstrong (Dublin Hospitals) returning after the recent birth of her daughter.
There was a particularly good after-race spread which was greatly welcomed by those runners who had headed out from the capital without their dinners. We owe our thanks to Paul Gorey and a large band of helpers and stewards who did a great job. There were some very nice prizes and only a small number of prizes had to be raffled due to the absence of the relevant prizewinners.
I noticed that there were several runners who were using headphones during the race. Obviously the stewards were lenient as there is now a rule preventing the use of headphones during road races. The reason for this is that the roads are not officially closed for our road races and runners must be alert at all times to the possibility of cars coming from any direction. To those who use headphones, please don’t force race organisers to disqualify you from the race.
As an aside, the Cork BHAA held a 5km road race last Wednesday night and they had 695 finishers. I don’t know how they do it. Check out their races if you are ever down in Cork – www.corkbhaa.com.
Our next races will be the re-arranged Trinity Track races on Thursday 25 June 2009 from 7pm. Registration from 6.15pm at the Moyne Institute (in the corner near the Lincoln Place gate). The weather forecast for the week is very good so we should be able to have a nice evening of running. It is always a great event so make sure you bring your running gear to work on Thursday morning. See the attached flyer for more details.
Then we will have the Army all-terrain 6km race in the Phoenix Park on Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 8pm. I will send on more details of this later.
Bye for now.
The Editor
