Our Winter League is now 3/4 one with today’s Clara Vale run the 8th of 12 with 4 to score.
Overall results
Barry O’Neill was the fastest overall on the 9.1 km long route with 39:53. He had intended to run only the short course due to a sore back but a wrong turn changed his fate and the course record – Barry was over 5 minutes faster than his handicap and finished 2nd in the adjusted rankings. Arne Klohn’s 40:13 was the second fastest and 47 seconds faster than his handicap. Derek Cullen with third-fastest time was 20 seconds slower than his handicap on a day when many were blown away – a few highlights:
- Bruce Phillips 1:58 faster than handicap on the 9.1 km course
- Aoife improved her time by 1:38 on the 5 km course
- Donna Quinn 1:08 faster and set a new course record for women of 42:52
- Yvonne, Arne and Colm all run 30-47 seconds better than their handicaps
On the other side Johnny Conway matched his handicap exactly as did the first-timers in this year’s league: Flora, Jimmy Cullen and Lizzie Murphy. Derek Cullen was the only runner slower than handicap – but only narrowly – he ran 41:16 having run 41:20 last time – full marks for consistency!
René Borg cemented his overall lead by running 7 minutes faster than his handicap to take overall victory on the day but this overall lead is now precarious: Donna Quinn lies 24 seconds behind with two ‘worse than handicap scores’ yet to potentially better and three more runners within the 2 minutes that they can improve by beating their handicap by 2 minutes in one of the last four races.
Of the runners with 3 or less to score, Derek Cullen and Claire O’Callaghan are well-positioned to jump right into the top-3 if they can keep current standards and Barry O’Neill and Marcus Murphy are dark horses if they can put together 2-4 good results in the last 4 rounds
Glendalough AC 