Next: report from Stuttgart ParkRun and Var Verdon Trail Canyon.
Twenty current full and affiliate members (via WW RC) took part in this weekend’s 20th edition of the Wicklow Way Relay running either for Glendalough AC, the Laragh Legends or Wicklow Wolf RC. Robin Seymour was drafted in to run for Team Luna and showed that he would have slotted nicely into the official Glendalough AC team running the 4th fastest leg 4 of the day and the fastest ever by a current and past member of the club!
Rachel and Angus joined the club of runners with 10 or more legs run in the relay this year while twelve members made their debut!
THE GOAL
Our base goal is always to try and defend our streak: never having finished outside the top-10 in six years of trying (this being year 7). Last year’s peak performance (4th) looked a hard repeat facilitated as it was by 3 top teams being disqualified. When it became clear we would miss our top-2 ranked men and our top-ranked female of the season, we settled on a healthy goal of just trying to maintain our top-10 status in what looked to be a highly competitive line-up of teams including local rivals Kilcoole and Parnell AC (the latter bolstered by Bernard Fortune of SBR and Lucy O’Malley of Inbhear Dee but missing Daire Finn who would run superbly for ‘Ain’t No way Relay’).
To Club or not to club
Since 2022, we have pursued a policy of not having ‘non-club’ runners on the Glendalough AC team (tempting as it is) since the interest within the club itself is sufficiently high and selection was devilishly difficult this year with our runners beating each other near-randomly. Thus in the end our official team consisted of the 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 11th, and 14th ranked men in the club and the 2nd and 3rd ranked woman.
LEG 1 – oFF TO A DECENT START
(Glendalough AC: 14th, Laragh Legends, 19th, Wicklow Wolf: 26th)
While the days of relying on Amidou Dembele dropping a ‘low-60s’ time are over both Angus and Torben packed tightly on leg 1 set their teams off to a decent start with Alan Kennedy leading out his Wicklow Wolf team. The hunt for top-10 had begun….
| RESULT |
| 1. Paul Stephenson (Rathfarnham WSAF) 0:56:25 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 14. Angus Tyner 1:10:40 (1st M55) – Glendalough AC |
| 19. Torben Dahl 1:11:49 – Laragh Legends |
| 26. Alan Kennedy 1:21:25 (3rd M55) – Wicklow Wolf |
LEG 2 – Neck on neck in 16th/17th!
(Glendalough AC: 16th, Laragh Legends, 17th, Wicklow Wolf: 26th)
Late addition to the Wicklow Wolf team Martin Cullen outran both our runners with an 85 minute time and pulled the wolf pack to their highest position of the day as he gained 5 spots into 21st.
Diarmuid and Kev were neck on neck through most of the leg finishing 2 spots and only 16 seconds apart on the most action-packed leg of the day featuring 102 positional changes for the 36 teams!
As Diarmuid lost two spots and Kevin gained two, the Laragh Legends moved right behind us. The top-10 seemed to be slipping….
| RESULT |
| 1. Matthew McConnell (Mountain Swifts) 1:07:46 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 17. Diarmuid Kavanagh 1:28:04 – Glendalough AC |
| 19. Kevin Ferguson 1:28:20 – Laragh Legends |
LEG 3 – RELIABLE RACHEL!
(Glendalough AC: 15th, Laragh Legends, 18th, Wicklow Wolf: 21st)
Rachel is nothing if not consistent and ran nine seconds faster than 2022 to finish 5th overall and move the team up one spot by putting nearly 3 minutes into Trailrunner’s Aoife McKernan. It was also fantastic to see Claire making a mini-comeback with a very promising time of 44:33 and even better to see one of our ‘beginners’ graduate to the big leagues – Siobhan Brennan running a strong 43:47 and finishing third F50.
Leg 3 featured only seven male runners this year including the two oldest competitors in the race (Leo Mahon in the over-75 and Francis Conroy in the over-80!)
| RESULT |
| 1. Anna Michael (Kilcoole AC) 0:36:08 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 5. Rachel Wisdom 0:38:08 (3rd woman, 2nd F40) – Glendalough AC |
| 20. Siobhan Brennan 0:43:47 (3rd F50) – Laragh Legends |
| 22. Claire Thompson 0:44:33 – Wicklow Wolf |
LEG 4 – Record-making Robin as contenders go astray
(Glendalough AC: 11th, Laragh Legends, 18th, Wicklow Wolf: 22nd)
Five runners extended their stay out on the trails of leg 4 including three of expected top finishers from the Raheny, Rathfarnham and Parnell AC. Parnell’s mistake was particularly important as it allowed Marcus to leap-frog them AND pass out a further 3 athletes to move the team up to 11th. Gavin Kennedy was only a further four spots behind but our eye-brows were raised highest by Robin Seymour – running for team Luna – setting a new club best for the current version of the leg.
| RESULT |
| 1. Barry Minnock (Tullamore Harriers (TT Racers)) 0:42:43 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 4. Robin Seymour 0:43:59 (1st M50) – club all-time best for leg – Team Luna |
| 7. Marcus Murphy 0:46:38 (3rd M40) – Glendalough AC |
| 11. Gavin Kennedy 0:48:38 (2nd M45) – Laragh legends |
| 29. Gerard O’Rourke 1:04:35 – Wicklow Wolf |
Leg 5 – Parnell strike back
(Glendalough AC: 11th, Laragh Legends, 17th, Wicklow Wolf: 21st)
Rene, running his 8th relay, worked to keep Bernard Fortune (running on the Parnell team) behind him and succeeded until the 4 km point where Bernard carved out a 200m lead which he held to the top of the climb and then extended on the downhill so that Parnell gained a 48s lead by Glenmalure. The team stayed 11th when Rene made up 5 minutes on Polish Athletic’s Katarzyna Bobka and overtook her on the descent.
Raheny moved further out of contention here with another extension but their runner still finished 12th. Simon Lynch secured a key goal for Wicklow Wolf: beating the mass start by 6 minutes!
| RESULT |
| 1. Conall Whelan (Ballyroan Abbeyleix AC (Mountain Swifts)) 0:54:24 (CR on new 2022+ course) |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 16. René Borg 1:09:11 – Glendalough AC |
| 23. Eoin Kennedy 1:16:51 – Laragh Legends |
| 31. Simon Lynch 1:32:51 – Wicklow Wolf |
Leg 6 – Graham vs. graham to get to graeme….
(Glendalough AC: 11th, Laragh Legends, 17th, Wicklow Wolf: 25th)
Sli Cualann’s Martin Breen was a late call-up when Derek Cullen withdrew ith a back injury and ran well finishing only a few minutes behind Graham Bush and moved the Legends up a spot. After an almighty ding-dong battle with Raheny’s Graham Ahearne, Graham just came up short finishing 24s behind him but storming to the Ironbridge finish in a time only a bit slower than his 2022 effort.
| RESULT |
| 1. Nick O’donoghue (East Cork AC) 0:57:05 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 13. Graham Bushe 1:05:28 (1st M50) |
| 29. Colm Kenna 1:24:09 |
Leg 7 – Into the top-10
(Glendalough AC: 10th, Laragh Legends, 16th, Wicklow Wolf: 29th)
It’s hard to look good on leg 7 when Tim O’Donoghue is running but Graeme Warren managed his leg debut well and moved the team into the top-10 for the first time. Behind him Anthony also improved his team’s position by one and set a new club record: first man to run leg 7 five times! Sugar-coating? He improved on his 2022 time.
Everyone gained an unexpected place when third-placed David Naylor went parallel to the route for a few km and was ruled non-competitive.
| RESULT |
| 1. Tim O’Donoghue (East Cork AC) 1:15:23 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 14. Graeme Warren 1:41:39 (3rd M50) – Glendalough AC |
| 20. Anthony Breen 1:46:41 – Laragh Legends |
| 35. James Heggie 2:35:00 – Wicklow Wolf |
Leg 8 – SKIN OF OUR TEETH…..
(Glendalough AC: 10th, Laragh Legends, 16th, Wicklow Wolf: 27th)
The final leg brings the most pressure and Donna Quinn nearly decided to ‘check out early’ going 100m up the wrong fork at the start of the leg before being courteously called back by a Clane AC runner. From then on she grit her teeth and kept the hard chasing Lucy O’Malley behind her to secure the covetted top-10 spot!
It appears there was only one second in it and while it was tight, it was not THAT tight: Donna had stopped at the traditional finish at the wall and was only called to the table in the car park at the last second! Aoife and Nora packed well in 18th and 19th.
| RESULT |
| 1. Ciara Hickey (Brothers Pearse AC) 0:38:14 |
| ——GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS————- |
| 9. Donna Quinn 0:45:24 (2nd F40) – Glendalough AC |
| 18. Aoife Joyce 0:49:24 – Laragh Legends |
| 19. Nora Butler 0:51:11 – Wicklow Wolf |
SUMMARY
(Finish: 10th, 8 hours 45 minutes)
A seventh straight year in the top-10 was secured although as always many things could have swung it another way: what if Darren Mooney of Parnell had not got injured on leg 1, what if their runner on leg 4 had not taken an extension, what if Raheny hadn’t been beset by a deluge of navigational errors? What if, what if, what if. Such is the relay – a clean run with minimal mishaps and errors and you always have a chance.
Teams did reasonably well on a hot day compared to predictions with the teams overall times off only by 0.9% to 9.2% with many debutantes making predictions that much harder. Teams did run slower than expected but overall statistics show that was true of most of the field.
HISTORY
All relay performances by current and former runners.
Glendalough AC 