Category: Race reports

Big focus on road races in this report with a slew of Club Records falling on the 4 mile and even the classical 10 km distance! A few of our runners also decided to skip the Moneystown 4 miler and head further south to the Annacurra Trail Race. Updated Club Records can be found here.

WICKLOW HOSPICE HALF

We had nine people in action at the annual Wicklow Hospice fund-raiser in Avondale. All copmeted in the half-marathon distance and Ben Lewis was our first man home with Nora Butler our first woman.

MONEYSTOWN 4 MILE

In the Moneystown 4 Mile – the second counter in this year’s club championship – Catherine Devitt was our first runner home. She annihilated the existing 4 mile women’s record in the process lowering Rachel Wisdom’s ten year old 25:24 mark to 23:51 (a time also faster than Angus Tyner’s 24:02 men’s record – the first woman’s club record to be faster than a current men’s record) while lowering her own eight year old personal best. As if that was not enough it also constituted a new course record breaking Donna Quinn’s inaugural mark.

Catherine was followed home by Gavin Kennedy who also hugely improved his PB from 26:15 to 24:55. Richard Allen – next in 25:55 – set a new club m50 record breaking Fergal Olohan’s 30:01 from last year. Donna Quinn was next as 2nd woman overall followed by Aoife Joyce (1st F45) and Siobhan Brennan who both won the F50 category and lowered her own club F50 record by over a minute and a half. We had several more finishers – most in PBs – including co-organiser David Clancy who would have been delighted to see 255 finishers.

annacurra trail race

109 IMRA runners took the start in Annacurra on a fast course where Eoin Phelan kept building his early lead in the ‘most prolific’ and Becky Quinn was our first finisher and took the 1st F50 prize a day after collecting her Wicklow Star Award for her performances at the World Masters in Canfranc last year.

CARLINGFORD 10 KM

Paul O’Riordan had a terrific run at the Carlingford 10 km – finishing 4th overall in a field of 286. His time of 36:57 was not only a new personal best but also broke the overall and M35 club record’s breaking Richard Costelloe’s 37:08 (overall record) and Torben Dahl’s long-standing M35 record of 37:45. It also put’s places Paul joint 3rd on our ‘all-time ranking’ (times run by current club runners) with club coach Rene Borg with only Amidou Dembele’s all-time best of 36:31 and Torben Dahl’s 36:55 from 2015 faster.

This weekend saw us record three more race results to bring the club tally to 592 – eight more to get above 600 races for the first time.

QUEEN’S PARKRUN BELFAST AND SOME PARKRUN STATS

Angus Tyner ran his 12th Parkrun in 2024 – this time on the Northern side of the border and once again accompanied by son Tivon. This time he stayed just above 20 minutes but as so often before was the first home in his age category.

Angus is the club’s most eager ParkRunner having raced 48 as a member of the club (of which we have record). Richard Costelloe and Catherine Devitt share 2nd place with 11 (mainly on their current ‘home turf’ in Zuiderpark in the Netherlands). In general our club is not the most Parkrun focused with only 123 Parkruns completed by 26 different members over our 10 year history.

MALAGA MARATHON

New member Monica Timmins ran the Malaga Marathon alongside just under 6000 other competitors as part of her training for this year’s Art O’Neill Challenge (where Graeme Warren and Eoin Phelan are also planning to compete). Monica had run Dublin earlier this Autumn and her marathon result is the 40th recorded this year by our club – by some distance the most (we had 26 marathon results in 2023 and never more than 12 before.

This mean marathons were the third most popular distance this year after the 1/2 marathon (46) and 5 km (45 km). This was a big drop in popularity for the 5 km distance where we had 70 competing in 2023!

The 5 km distance remains far and away our most raced distance with 449 results (10 km is second with 190 results).

GLANAGEENTY HALF-MARATHON AND THE RACE FOR ‘MOST PROLIFIC’ 2024

Eoin Phelan attended the Wicklow Wolf RC party and then was on the road the next morning at 5 am for the trip to Castleisland and the Glanageenty Trail running Festival.

As of this writing results are not yet available for the longest distance (the half-marathon) in which Eoin competed but he extended his record as ‘most prolific’ to 53 races and he is planning at least another 2 in 2024. He holds a 25 race lead over last year’s most prolific runner – James Heggie (currently on 28 which was the winning tally in 2023).

Despite being only a member for three years Eoin has moved up to 8th in the overall list of most races – a list led by Angus Tyner (138) and he now has 7th placed Rene Borg (80 races) in his sights. Most prolific woman in 2024 is Aoife Joyce with 13 races and the most prolific in club history is Donna Quinn with 112. Donna also holds the record for most races run by a woman in one season for the club at 26 races (in 2017).

It should be noted we do not count ParkRuns in this competition.

Our women’s department is finishing off the year in style with medals at the seniors while Catherine continues winning in the Netherlands. Also a shout out to Dave Lawless who was ‘missed’ in the finisher roll for the Waterford Half-marathon in our last report.

MEIJENDELLOP AND ZUIDERPARKRUN

Catherine recorded her st victory of the and then followed it up with a solid 19:02 Parkrun win at Zuiderparkun the following Saturday.

WICKLOW SENIOR CROSS-COUNTRY

7 were rostered and 5 took the start line on the new course at Charlesland Golf Course for the Wicklow Senior Cross-country.

MEN’S RACE

Alan Kennedy and Neil Fusco became the 8th and 9th men to compete at this level for our club. Unfortunately, Neil had to pull the plug after 4 km leaving Alan as our only finisher in a very respectable 38th out of 44 and a good 7 minutes ahead of the last finisher.

Women’s race

Loraine overtook Donna on the final few metres the women’s 5000m distance to lead the team home in 7th position. Combining with Donna and Nora this was enough to secure our first ever medals at senior level in Wicklow as the women’s team took Bronze ahead of Bray Runners and behind Parnell and Kilcoole.

this was the first time we had a women’s team in the senior cross-country – Donna having been our only runner in this event previously.