Home Race Report 2018 Dublin Graded Meet 2 Tallaght

2018 Dublin Graded Meet 2 Tallaght

11 VALERIE Power Sportsworld 6:30.55
12 IRENE O’Connor Sportsworld 6:39.07
13 CARMEL Dolan Sportsworld 6:51.59
14 BRONWYN Murphy White Sportsworld 6:53.64
15 OLIVE Fogarty Sportsworld 6:55.10

I was ranked 14, which was the average age of everyone bar the five of us representing Sportsworld in the Women’s C grade 1500m race up in Tallaght track last night.

Race reporter Bronywn

Since starting on the track on Saturday mornings last summer and loving it, not to mention seeing serious improvements in my running, I have been dying to get back to it after such a gloomy winter. So I was delighted when I heard that Dublin Athletics were hosting a fortnightly race in Santry and Tallaght from May until August and thought I would rope a few others in to do it with me, so I wouldn’t make a complete show of myself on my own.

However, when we got there and saw the ‘competition’ in their short-shorts and serious looking multi-coloured spikes we got a little nervous. One girl was so serious she had two different coloured spikes on, which must mean she actually owns two pairs of spikes and not a pair of spikes between the five of us! We all felt a little out of place and a lot old. As Irene put it, she had ‘socks older than some of the girls in our race’ but it was too late to back out, so we did a few warm-up laps then stood around for half an hour and got cold again, as you do.

Our clumpy road runners plonked firmly on the wrong side of the starting line, we were ready to go, but there was a little delay and we were told to wait a few minutes and stay warm. Our competitors kept warm by doing strides and dynamic stretches and we rubbed our cold hands together, which we regretted as soon as the race took off. ‘Why didn’t I warm up?’ and ‘why am I doing this?’ were the only things going through my mind when I had no oxygen for the 6:53.64 mins it took me to get around the track, but once it was over and I stopped coughing, I thought it was brilliant. That’s one thing nobody warned us about; the post track race smokers-cough you get that lasts for hours afterwards! Carmel even had to go get a cough bottle.

As for the race, I started way too ‘fast’ trying to hang on to the back of the group, but Carmel and Irene paced themselves very well and both surged on the last lap. Val hung on extremely well to the short-shorts girls the whole way round and myself and Olive managed to not be lapped by the winner! That was my main goal – just don’t get lapped!

Seriously though, and all joking aside I would totally recommend others in the club to try this one out. We had great support, Emily and Miles were there and we all heard loads of cheers for us by name and cheers for Sportsworld as we were running, which was quite unexpected, really encouraging and greatly appreciated.

We represented the ‘normal’ non-short shorts runners, who might be afraid to go to something like this, but we were made feel very welcome there and we would all definitely do it again and would encourage others to try it as well. Val spoke to a man who has been running the graded meets for 20 years and comes second last every time but said he doesn’t care as it’s great for improving your road racing time.

We went there for the laugh and the novelty of a track race on a Wednesday night, but honestly we really enjoyed it. It’s a totally different kind of running – lung busting and exhilarating and if it helps improve 5k and 10k time, its well worth the 6-7 minutes of body shock. The only down side was that we couldn’t find coffee afterwards, first world problems, but a coffee cart would make a killing up there.

When we finally got our breath back, we watched the Sportsworld men running their races. Gareth Murran ran a blinder for 2^nd place in the B grade men’s 1500m and so nearly got the win, as did Will Greensmyth in his C grade 1500m, narrowly missing out on 3^rd place, with Conor Keating and Diarmuid Ó Súilleabháin placing 8^th and 9^th respectively in the same race.

Representing Sportsworld in the men’s D grade 1500m were Declan Brady (who came 3^rd), Aidan Curran and Alan Power (7^th and 8^th) and Timothy Morahan ran the 5000m in a very impressive 17:43.76.

Apologies if I missed anyone!

Next meet is next Wednesday 23rd in Tallaght: