With no races at the moment, we didn’t expect to be writing any reports until IMRA opened up their Virtual replacement for the traditional Killiney Hill Relay.
Rules allowed runners to pick any 2 km stretch within their 2 km radius and run on on Wednesday 15th. To record a result, runners simply had to record their activity and take a photo of themselves before, during or after.
This obviously meant some runners had the rub of the green and access to very fast net downhill courses. Club coach René Borg took full advantage by picking a 2 km drop from the forest line at Scarr mountain to the road in front of his houe at Drummin townland. For his effort he nearly snatched the ‘Pushing the legal limits of the Spirit of IMRA award AKA Downhill Run Only Award’ being awarded 2nd place. Rathfarnham’s Peter O’Farrell somehow contrived to find a faster and more downhill course.
Today’ result and final tally. 16 runners competed and 9 got the minimum 6 to score. The final round saw a three way battle between Aoife, Flora and Rene for the win and the Sportsroom voucher!
The final round of the Winter League took part on the Brockagh Woods course with runners trying to best their handicaps against the 5k and 9.1 km courses.
The situation
Aoife Joyce only had to better her current results by 21 seconds in order to make it impossible for either Flora McKnight or Rene Borg to catch her. It proved neck on neck as both Rene and Aoife had recorded the maximum score for the last 4 races in a row and would do so again at the fifth asking.
Having run 29:41 and thus running off a 30 minute handicap, Aoife obliterated her time with 25:28. This made Rene’s time academical but he got some consolation by lowering Barry O’Neill’s course record of 42:55 to 42:07 and taking the win on the day. Flora could not improve her handicap and dropped from 2nd to 3rd in the overall with Rene taking second. It all came down to 21 seconds after 12 races!
Position
Name
Start time
Finish time
Actual time
Average Pace
Avg / lap
Behind winner
Course run
1
René Borg
9:43 am
10:25:07 am
42:07
4:35 min/km
10:32
Long
2
Aoife Joyce
10:00 am
10:25:28 am
25:28
5:06 min/km
12:44
0:21
Short
3
Marcus Murphy
10:03 am
10:29:08 am
26:08
5:14 min/km
13:04
4:01
Short
4
Colm Kenna
10:03 am
10:29:09 am
26:09
5:14 min/km
13:04
4:02
Short
5
Derek Cullen
10:07 am
10:30:46 am
23:46
4:45 min/km
11:53
5:39
Short
6
Barry O’Neill
9:47 am
10:30:58 am
43:58
4:47 min/km
11:00
5:51
Long
7
Flora McKnight
10:03 am
10:33:15 am
30:15
6:03 min/km
15:07
8:08
Short
Round 12 – Brockagh Woods – standings
League summary
The league was evenly contested for much of it with several winners: Barry O’Neill and Bruce Phillips won one race each, Aoife, Flora and Colm took two each and Rene won 4.
#
Name
Wins
\Races
TOP 6
AVG
Behind
1
Aoife Joyce
2
6
5:48:03
0:58:01
0:00:00
2
René Borg
4
6
5:48:24
0:58:04
0:00:21
3
Flora McKnight
2
6
5:49:10
0:58:12
0:01:07
4
Derek Cullen
0
6
5:52:43
0:58:47
0:04:40
5
Colm Kenna
2
6
5:55:49
0:59:18
0:07:46
6
Donna Quinn
0
6
5:56:05
0:59:21
0:08:02
7
Marcus Murphy
0
6
5:56:58
0:59:30
0:08:55
8
Bruce Phillips
1
6
5:57:04
0:59:31
0:09:01
9
Yvonne Brennan
0
6
6:01:39
1:00:17
0:13:36
10
Richard Kieran
0
5
4:56:05
0:59:13
11
Barry O’Neill
1
4
3:58:10
0:59:33
12
Catherine Devitt
0
4
4:07:19
1:01:50
13
Aisling Kirwan
0
2
2:02:04
1:01:02
14
Anne Marah
0
1
1:00:28
1:00:28
15
Rachel Wisdom
0
1
1:01:46
1:01:46
16
Michael Heatly
0
1
1:01:49
1:01:49
League 2019/20 – final standings
Notable achievements
This year’s league had four new course records: Donna Quinn and Aoife Joyce lowered the Roundwood 10k and 5k courses to 46:49 and 23:24 while Rene Borg lowered the long course times for Clara Vale and Brockagh Woods to 39:44 and 42:07.
People where adept at cracking their handicap breaking their times in 69 out of 106 attempts. Most of the 43 ‘failures’ – 15 – happened in the first two rounds as people were adjusting to their 2020 fitness levels!
League 2020/21
The league will return November 2020 but we will have other Saturday activities coming up for the rest of the year.
Next year’s league will feature and even tighter handicap system which should help keep the maximum number of people in contention for the longest period of time. We will also revisit bringing back the Pink Poulanass and Lower Lake Round courses to create a 16 round league.
Last week’s National Masters cross-country marked the end of the cross-country season for most of our runners. But the action continues…
Parkrun
Our weekend running began at 9 am in Avondale where Angus Tyner finished 6th in the ParkRun in 22:12. Not long after the smallest crowd yet assembled for our penultimate Winter League race (perhaps the weather deterred?) on the crown jewel of the six courses in the league: Clara Vale.
The League has come down to a three-way battle between Aoife Joyce, Flora McKnight and coahc René Borg. All would have to better their handicap by 2 minutes or more to have a chance to stay in contention. Flora duly lowered her 29 minute handicap to 27 min and Aoife took her 30 minute mark down to 26 min. René had to improve his handicap of 42 minutes for the longer course to 40 minutes to stay within reach and just about scraped it with 39:44 – lowering Barry O’Neill’s course-record by 10 seconds in the process. All now comes down to Brockagh Woods next weekend where Aoife starts the day as the heavy favourite – her fate is in her own hands.
Aoife at the Enniscorthy 10k. Photo: John Busher
Enniscorthy 10 km
Aoife returned to Enniscorthy for the first time in 12 years looking to improve on her 46 minute mark set in Inch in July. Storm Dennis meant this task was a bit more onerous than expected but she still came home in a chip time of 44:48. Mission accomplished.
The National Masters Cross-Country came to Avondale and four of our runners joined up underneath the banners of the broader Sli Cualann teams to compete. Two and one kilometer loops had been laid out with a start from Avondale House featuring several hills including ‘The Green Wave’ midway through the bigger two kilometer lap making it one of the hilliest cross-country courses in the country.
There was much success for Sli Cualann overall with several individual medals and team bronze for the Men’s Intermediate team. Glendalough AC could not contribute to this effort as we have no male members under 35!
Ladies race
Ladies Masters and Over-65 men
Donna Quinn, running her first national cross-country event, set off first with the Masters Ladies race over 4 km (two laps) and went on to have a strong run finishing 67th out of 206 and fifth of the 11 Sli Cualann ladies in action.
Men’s race
Sli Cualann Masters (O35-O65) men’s team
Our three male representatives raced in the men’s over-35 to 65 race over 7 km (three 2 km laps after a shorter 1 km warm-up lap). 258 set off in a regular stampede.
First Glendalough AC man was club coach René Borg representing Sli Cualann for the first time (having not run outside county level since his transfer from Crusaders AC in 2013) in 30:11. Angus and Anthony arrived within a minute with Angus in 30:28 and Anthony in 31:10. This was the case for much of the Sli Cualann team – Parnell’s Tony Collins arrived at the 30 minute mark with Jonathan O’Neill in 30:35 and MJ O’Neill in 30:41 making it six out of the total twenty Sli Cualann runners in the field within that 70 second time-span.
Angus’ run made him fourth scorer in the 2nd placed over-50ies team with Rene and Anthony 2nd and 3rd scorer for the Sli Cualann B team that finished 22nd out of 22 in the over-35s!!!
As the race contained three or more Glen AC runners, it will count in the Club Championship 2020.
RESULTS
Masters Women
Teresa Doherty, Finn Valley 15:21
————–GLENDALOUGH AC RUNNERS (REPRESENTING SLI CUALANN)—————
Despite the Dublin Marathon coming up and winter training in full swing for many, a few club runners still got a race in over the last two weekends – in this case our two Danes!
First up was Torben Dahl who finished 13th in ‘To Hell with the Fairies’ out of 101 runners over the testing half-marathon course with 650 m ascent.
This Sunday, Rene Borg ran the European Cross-Country Experience – a ‘relaxed’ cross-country races offering a glimpse at the European Championship course. He finished 28th out of the 496 participants.
After a one-year absence from Novice cross-country, we had a men’s team representing us last weekend for the county season opener in Roundwood. The men’s challenge was to run 6 x 1 km laps of a hilly field and combine the best four scorers in an attempt to win team medals.
Debutante Richard Costelloe had a storming run: going off boldly in the top half of the field and holding on for a fine 9th place. Behind him Barry O’Neill and René Borg packed for most of the race. Rene passed Barry on the 4th lap only to be repassed on the final half of the last lap. They finished 14th and 15th with 4 seconds between them.
The last man is usually critical in cross-country and this proved the case again: Colm Kenna suffered a bit as the result of a too fast lap 1, but by toughing it out to the finish line he secured our silver medals. Had one of the two Bray Runners behind him not DNFed, we would likely have been consigned to the Bronze!
Kilcoole where run-away winners with 12 points (15 points clear of our crew) and the individual honours went to Inbhear Dee’s Robin Mooney.
This weekend another four-man team consisting of Anthony Breen, Barry O’Neill, Colm Kenna and René Borg will take on the Wicklow Intermediate in Avondale.
We got the excitement we had hoped for in the duel between Barry O’Neill and Bruce Phillips of who could ‘game the handicaps’ and run the best. Barry O’Neill knew that a 2 minute improvement of his previous best would secure him the league but this was easier set than done as he had run 44 minutes flat for the hilly 9.3 km course last time.
Result of Round 12 of 12 (Brockagh Woods)
Bruce came in without improving his tally – meaning ‘only’ beating his time by 1:57 would now be enough for Barry – a time of 42:03. BUT … it was not to be – despite lowering the best time for the course to 42:55 and taking 65 seconds off his best. To add injury to insult, Aoife Joyce improved her handicap the most of any runner on the day – taking 2 minutes 3 seconds off her mark and this moved her up into 2nd place overall.
Overall results (12 of 12): In bold the top-4 results of each runner
In the end 16 seconds separated Aoife and Bruce in the overall standings with Barry O’Neill a further 52 seconds adrift. Barry did secure the honorary title ‘King of the Hill’ for being the best performer on the hilly routes (Clara Vale and Brockagh) while King of the Road went to Derek Cullen who performed best on the Green Gapways course. In the end we had 19 runners competing of which 11 managed to get the minimum 4 to score.
Winner Bruce Phillips
In terms of individual wins Rene Borg did best with 5 victories followed by Barry O’Neill with 3. Bruce, Donna, Arne, and Aoife took 1 race each. Two runners completed all twelve races in the series: victor Bruce Phillips and Rene Borg followed by Aoife and Colm with 10 races each.
Barry O’Neill – 3rd despite his effort and new course record
Best improver in relation to handicap was Barry O’Neill – who improved it by 2 minutes 59 seconds ON AVERAGE in his races . No one was closer than Aoife Joyce who took 78 seconds off on average. Fastest average pace of the league was held by Rachel Wisdom with 4:26 min/km (but this was based on one race). Bruce Phillips ran by far the furthest – completing 97.4 km over his 12 races followed by René Borg with 69.2 km (this shows both who ran most races and who preferred the longer courses over the shorter).
All in all the short courses were more popular with 70 runs over them versus 36 people running long routes. Based on results, Brockagh Woods is the toughest course followed bye Green Gapways and Clara Vale
Course statistics after the Winter League 2018/2019
We had the most competitive handicap race yet at Roundwood Reservoir today. 8 out of 10 runners improved their handicaps. With 4 runners improving their handicap by more than 2 minutes and thus getting the maximum score, there was a shake-up at the top with Bruce Phillips taking the lead – 38 seconds ahead of Aoife Joyce and 57 seconds ahead of Barry O’Neill.
Overall results after 11 of 12 rounds
It is only the second time the courses have been run so the fastest times run were reduced for nearly all races. Arne Klohn ran the new best mark for the 5 km (22:36) and Yvonne set the new ladies 5 km best at 23:56. The 10 km best times were reduced to 46:06 overall by Derek Cullen and 48:35 for the ladies by Donna Quinn. Barry O’Neill ran 44:12 but took the 10 km route along the lower reservoir so while his time has been accepted into the rankings, it won’t stand as a course best.
The plot thickened at the Miner’s Road where today’s 10th round of the Club Winter League was held. This course is known as a ‘wind tunnel’ even on quiet days so we set off with some expectation of high winds. Thankfully, it was milder than expected even if the outward journey was slowed down enough to make beating handicaps challenging.
Yet this was exactly what most did. Bruce Phillips took the day and the biggest handicap improvement – finishing 2 minutes 3 seconds ahead of handicap.
Aoife Joyce in second improved by 1 minute 41 seconds allowing. This meant both Aoife and Bruce leap-frogged Donna Quinn who dropped to 3rd. Third place went to club coach René Borg who bettered his handicap by 41 seconds. Colm Kenna also timed his run well bettering his handicap by 15 seconds to finish fourth.
The fastest actual time was set by fifth-placed Derek Cullen who ran 21:56, the only person nipping under 22 minutes on the day. Yvonne Brennan came 6th and was fastest woman on the day (2nd best time overall) coming home in 22:25 missing her handicap by 35 seconds.
Results Round 10
It’s now incredibly tight going into the last two races – Bruce is only 5 seconds behind Aoife and Donna merely 53 seconds with one poor result to discard making it fairly easy for her to close the 53 second gap. Everyone else relies on breaking their handicap substantially in BOTH of the next two races – the only realistic contender outside the top-3 is Rene who is 2 minutes 35 seconds down. The runners who have not yet run the minimum 4 to score do no longer have a realistic chance of ‘crashing the party late’.
Overall results: Round 10 of 12
A good morning out was celebrated in the Glendalough Green re-opened after its January hiatus!
NEXT ROUND: Next Saturday morning in Roundwood for the Reservoir Rounds courses!
Glendalough AC 