from Galway City Harriers On the first weekend of bad weather conditions for a number of weeks now, the training and racing did not stop for GCH members. While some of us on the road to deliverance (also known as marathon training), braved the elements locally to tackle the weekly club run on Sunday morning, Bernie Kelly flew a lone GCH flag down in Mallow Co. Cork for the first race in the 4-race Munster 10-mile series at Sunday lunch-time, while an even bigger number of our athletes tackled the annual Tuam AC 8K road-race around the cathedral town later that day. Mallow 10-mile race results are now available at www.mallowac.ie and Bernie passes on the following comments:
“Attached is a picture of new woolly hat which was presented to entrants to this year’s Mallow 10-miler. This replaces the previous t-shirt. Conditions were cold, wet and windy today but a record number of entrants made it to the start line for 12.30pm. This was the first of the Munster classics – the next race is in Dungarvan on Sunday February 1st. Some Galway athletes who made the long trek to Mallow were TJ Beatty (prize-winner in M60 category) and Jarlath Fitzgerald from Loughrea AC – the latter having a nice warm up before he heads to India next Thursday for his next marathon on Sunday 18th January. I did spot an Athenry AC singlet but never quite got to see who it belonged to. I managed to continue to keep the GCH flag flying with a win in the F50 women in 1h17m37s.”
Meanwhile, back in Tuam, GCH athletes among the prize-winners included Gerry Ryan (race-winner in just over 25m), Mary McHugh, Barbara Bergin, Ian Egan, Pat Burkitt and Brian Geraghty. The GCH men’s senior team won the team prize (Gerry Ryan, Ian Egan, Gerry Carty and Billy King contributing points) while the GCH ladies’ senior team came second.
Pat Burkitt is recently back from his sojourns in South America and the Tuam race was his first run in 3 weeks – since he last ran a 6K race in Brazil on 21st December. He tells us that there was some contrast between these two outings bearing in mind that it was mid-summer and around 30’C in Brazil – welcome home Pat!
See some photos attached compliments of Pat.
Well done all, prize-winners and Fit4Life members alike (of which I know there were at least a few racing at 8K for the first time in Tuam). We expect the full set of race-results to appear at: https://www.tuamac.com/news/Spring8K2009.html shortly.