Boyle, Sunday February 21st – The beautiful Lough Key Forest Park was the setting for the National Intermediate & Masters cross country at the weekend. We hired out a club bus and hit for Roscommon at 10 am. As we headed through the midlands, snow covered fields was the theme everywhere but thankfully there was none in the forest park. Weather wise things were perfect – dry and no wind. The course, with one steady uphill followed by its descent at the other side, was medium – heavy, and ploughed up at one corner in particular.

With Emily collecting our numbers in the log cabin, we realised that the master’s women’s race was off in a half an hour, so quick action had to be taken. It was extremely competitive, with 100 girls crossing the finishing line within 5 minutes of each other, so averaging out at a woman every 3 seconds.

Both Lucy (3rd in her age category) and Helen finished in the top 10 overall, and we got a decent display from all of our women. Judith narrowly missed out on an age category medal by less than 10 seconds. The best news was that we came away with team silver with Lucy, Helen, Aideen & Sandra scoring. Helen White helped Dublin to a silver medal.

The team contest was won comfortably by a North Belfast Harriers side that are easily capable of medalling at senior level, indeed they were national senior champions in 2007 albeit with a stronger team on that occasion. They had all team members running in the top twenty five.

While the intermediates was a race for younger (and in some cases faster) girls, it was understandably not as competitive or packed as the masters race that preceded it. Both races were held on the same length of course. The team comprised mainly of October’s Dublin novice winning team, with welcome additions Stephanie and beginner Aoife Lynch. We came away with team bronze medals and were led home by a brilliant Louise. Well done girls.

The master’s men’s field was equally as competitive and condensed as the master’s women’s race was, as the 200 runners completed the course within 9 minutes of each other. It was won by a terrific Peter Matthews who despite being well ahead kept huffing and puffing as he wanted a good workout ahead of the National Inter Clubs XC on Sunday week. There was no joy for us here, but it was great to have a men’s team running in the national master’s; something that we usually don’t get. Well done to Ed, Paul Mitchell, Willers, Seán and Killian for giving up their Sunday and travelling down with us.

The final race of the day was the intermediate men. Their was no joy here either for our men, however it was still a beneficial race that will serve the men’s team well for the Inter Clubs XC on Sunday week. It was won by DSD’s Breandán O Neill. Breandán is on scholarship at DCU, and was bronze medallist in last week’s intervarsities indoors 3000m in 8:34.05. The team title was won by City of Derry, who are also the current National Novice and National Half Marathon champions, and for the record they have Ireland’s current fastest man too in Jason Smyth.

The woman’s Meet and Train cross country series finished on Sunday 21st of February in Irishtown with 4 x 400m relay races and a small prizegiving ceremony. The Sportsworld B team won the Dimond division. Also, by winning each of the four races of the series Edel Madigan won the overall first place and Louise Nolan got the third spot.
The whole event was great fun and for many of us it was a first try on the track so we enjoyed the opportunity of experiencing something new. Running in random teams added novelty to the event and the benefit of it was that we got to know girls from other clubs.

Congratulations to the winners and see you all in the next Meet and Train series. The dates of the races should be known shortly.

Report by Natalia

Leinster Senior Cross Country 2010

Kilmacow, Sunday February 14th – Distance runners are such a romantic race of people that (for some of them anyway) their ideal way of spending Valentine’s day involves a trip to south Kilkenny to run in the Leinster senior cross country, well away from where their partners can nag them. And how worthwhile a trip it was, as it turned out to be one of the most successful days in the club’s history. We passed through a deserted Ballyhale on the way down, as most of the parish would have been in Thurles to see their hurlers beat Newtownshandrum in the club semi finals. Kilmacow is only 4m from Waterford and is home to agriculturally some of the best land I’ve seen in a while. The St Senan’s sports complex is a great example of how when a rural community pulls together they can create something marvellous. There are a soccer club, GAA club, tug of war and athletics club all set up at the clubhouse. They have fantastic GAA and soccer pitches, a long jump straight, an improvised running track and miles of stoned or grassy trails through a forest or along the banks of a tributary of the Suir. All off little if any public funding I would imagine.

We were greeted with gorgeous sunshine and a very firm course that didn’t cut up anywhere despite the amount of kiddies races preceding that of the adults. The course was 95 % flat across pitches and fields and there was one steep hill thrown in and a steep downhill at the opposite side of the course, both of which were no more than 10m long. Both hills were paved with shredded wood bark to prevent any slippages of the large amount of athletes that the organisers were expecting. However most of this expected crowd never showed up possibly due to a number of reasons:

1. People wanted to be fresh for the more important national intermediate & masters XC next week in Roscommon
2. A large amount of club runners showing up at the MySport Enniscorthy 10k
3. Faster athletes ran at the AAA indoor championships in Sheffield

Remember that this event was re-fixed since mid-January due to the ice & snow that crippled Ireland at the time. Athletes usually have schedules planned for up to six months in advance of an event that they’re looking to peak at, and if a race was cancelled along the way they usually would not pencil it in on the re-match. Anyway we could only deal with and dispose of the athletes that did show up. First up were our senior women who had a 90 % strength squad lining out. The race was won by Beijing 08 Olympian Pauline Curley, with Catriona only 14 seconds behind her taking individual bronze. She was followed home by Lucy, Aoife and Crona. With four athletes in the top ten, we were always destined to become Leinster senior champions for 2010; getting the nod over 40 – 50 % strength Raheny and Tullamore sides. Jean also had a magnificent run, finished only 12 seconds off Crona and a minute off the leader; and she was followed closely by Helen. It’s great that there’s so much competition for places on the team.

It is equally difficult to get on the men’s team, although we compete at a lower level than the girls (we are rated in the B category for the national cross country). At the sharp end it was a five horse race for much of the time, with local farmer and Irish international Brian Maher pulling away for victory in the closing stages. Phil had possibly his finest ever half an hour in a Sportsworld singlet, as he finished 6th and a minute behind the leading group. Paul also did magnificently to earn a place in the top ten. Mikey and Garrett completed the Sportsworld scoring. Paul Duffy had to stop to tie his shoelaces in the middle of it, and that took the sting out of his attack. However he’ll be there again next week in Roscommon. Packie also came along for the sunshine following on from his pentathlon the previous day.

Our men’s team ended up battling it out with a large Liffey Valley squad, with ourselves getting the nod by a mere four points (or one place per man). While it’s great to get a team medal, it’s ironic because both clubs would normally be battling it out for 7th or 8th positions in the Dublin senior cross country, yet now we’re the second best Leinster side (in theory anyway). It’s particularly great for Mikey and Garrett, as they never won a medal of any description in their year or two of athletics, so the day belonged to them.

In addition we had Lucy and Aoife scoring on the victorious Meath team, with Catriona and Jean contributing to Dublin’s silver. Phil and Paul scored for the winning Dublin team. Overall it was a fantastic day out in the Kilkenny countryside, and it was great to come away with a haul of medals; especially for people that rarely win them. It was nice to get a relaxed atmosphere at what is normally a very stressful and competitive race; however the national intermediates next week will be a much different kettle of fish. It was also great that we had almost full strength squads out for both races, and hopefully we’ll get more of the same next week. The cross country season will be all over in a two or three weeks. It remains to be seen if this race means anything in a national context, but all we can do for the time being is keep up the hard work.

Leinster Senior Cross Country 2010 Women
 
Place Name Club County
1 Pauline Curley Tullamore Harriers Offaly
3 Catriona Jennings Sportsworld Dublin 
5 Lucy Darcy Sportsworld Meath
6 Aoife Brady Sportsworld Meath
10 Crona Brady Sportsworld Meath
12 Jean Wilson Sportsworld Dublin 
13 Helen White Sportsworld Dublin 
 
Leinster Senior Cross Country 2010 Women – Team Result
 
Place Club Points
1 Sportsworld 24
2 Raheny Shamrocks 59
3 Tullamore Harriers 65
4 St Abban’s 91
 
Leinster Senior Cross Country 2010 Men
 
Place Name Club County
1 Brian Maher KCH Kilkenny
6 Phil Kilgannon Sportsworld Dublin 
10 Paul O Connell Sportsworld Dublin 
15 Mikey Cunningham Sportsworld Dublin 
18 Garrett Murran Sportsworld Dublin
22 Paul Duffy Sportsworld Dublin 
25 Packie Enright Sportsworld Dublin 
 
Leinster Senior Cross Country 2010 Men – Teams
 
Place Club Points
1 Raheny Shamrocks 23
2 Sportsworld 49
3 Liffey Valley  53
4 Tullamore Harriers 100

Nenagh, Saturday February 13th – We had one Sportsworld athlete (Packie Enright) at the universities indoor track & field championships at the weekend )www.iuaa.org). Representing the college he graduated from in October (the DIT) as a one year down, he elected to avoid the stiff competition at the running events and partake in the combined events; consisting of 5 events in which he had absolutely no prior experience. His reason for doing this is because last year, they were only two competitiors at the pentathlon, so Enright saw it as a chance to score some points for the college by just turning up. However his cunning plan backfired, and this year it was well populated with genuine combined eventers and all year round track athletes.

As a sport, combined events is certainly no soft touch; it ranks up there with the toughest of them. It’s for powerfully built people that usually don’t have the talent to be victorious at one of the single events. Training for it is like a full time job – Moscow 80 & LA 84 decathlon champion Daley Thompson used to spend his day at the track, and I’m sure Jessica Ennis does the same. Thankfully it didn’t drag onto two days or more like it usually does.

The first event for Enright was the high jump, and three failures at the minimum opening height of 1.30m meant that he’d no points bagged; in fact the only thing he was going away with was a sliced lower back and metal burn from the outdated aluminium bar. The thing was that if he scissor kicked it he would probably have got over, but he tried a pathetic attempt at a Fosbury flop using the wrong takeoff foot (or maybe even off two feet which would have been a foul). However it’s a technical event rather than a talent-based one, and with practice it can be mastered to jumping far above your own height.

Next up were the nipple high (1.10m) sprint hurdles. Now lanes, high hurdles, starting blocks, false starts, pressure applied to the blocks, reaction times, dipping at the line, photo finishes, steward’s enquiries; what would a road runner know about any of these? Not a thing. Well in fact Enright easily cleared all five of them with plenty to spare, and survived it. When people clip or knock them (or fall) it’s because they want to just glide over them rather than expending too much vertical energy (which slows you down of course).

Then there was the long jump, another technical event for explosive people who have superb speed. An average showing here by Enright, but there were plenty of other novices in the same ball park of 4m. Better long jumpers firstly generate superb velocity on the straight. Then after foot plant they push all their weight upwards from the thigh/gluteal areas, and their momentum gains them the distance. People not up on the technique tend to stay lower to the ground, kind of like running through it instead of jumping.

Getting hungry at this stage, but there was no time for food as it was into the concrete block throwing festival (or shot putt as it’s usually known). Up against big huge rugby guys that would rather be in the pub watching the France match than in a Baltically cold converted hay barn, Enright gave as good as he got here too. Or maybe we should re-phrase that – stick with cross country running. His last throw was a foul as the ball had left his jaw before leaving the circle. Another words you must push it out, rather than a hooked style soccer goalkeeper’s long throw.

Having been on the first bus down from Dublin at cock crow, at 18:30 the final event of the elongated day took place – a 1 kilometre run. Enright had been looking forward to this all day as a revenge opportunity on the rest of the lads. Their aerobic fitness wouldn’t have a patch on someone running 60m a week and that’s from a specialist running club. Would it not? Well Enright found himself last at the gun after an aggressive opening lap of 27 seconds. The Sportsworld representative went through in 30-31, but even this felt too fast. But bit by bit he managed to pick people off, reminding himself along the way that this was his event over the rest of them. It wasn’t though, as it was won by a 400m hurdler who, if kept going for another three laps would have ran a 4:09 mile.

And so it was to the end of proceedings. With the top six competitors getting points for their college in every event, Enright failed to score any points for his college (only two out of our four athletes did). Mission failed. Moral of the story – don’t attempt competing in something that you haven’t trained for. Applies to everything. However he set some DIT records that will hopefully be around for a long time to come.

IUAA Indoor Male Combined Events 2010

Place

Name

College

60mH

1000m

HJ

LJ

SP

Total

1

Paul Byrne

DCU

8.91

2:44.80

1.85

6.32

8.22

766

821

670

657

379

3293

2

John Fagan

DCU

8.95

2:35.80

1.75

5.81

8.87

757

921

585

546

418

3227

3

William Finnegan

NUIG

9.84

3:09.30

1.65

5.84

9.12

572

576

504

552

433

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2637

4

Joe Barry

CIT

10.25

2:56.90

1.50

5.49

9.25

495

695

389

479

441

2499

5

Rory Moloney

UL

12.47

2:46.50

1.55

4.54

6.18

172

803

426

297

259

1957

6

Damien Walsh

WIT

11.02

3:08.30

1.35

4.61

6.43

365

585

283

310

274

1817

7

Donal McCann

NUIG

10.20

DNF

1.60

5.73

8.94

504

0

464

529

422

1919

8

Packie Enright

DIT

12.97

2:55.30

0

4.15

6.35

100

711

0

230

269

1310

9

Seán McMahon

UU

DNS

DNS

1.65

DNS

DNS

0

0

504

0

0

504

Do i need to say who the report is by?

Annacurra 2010: Colm, Paul, Jakub,Liam, Con & Brid

On Saturday last (Feb 6th), a good group of Sportsworld members made the trip down to the village of Annacurra near Aughrim, Co.Wicklow for the 2nd instalment of the IMRA Winter League. Although it was fairly miserable leaving Dublin, conditions on arrival in Annacurra were perfect – sunny but not too warm and much more importantly – no wind! The village itself was also perfectly set up for the race with the registration, the start and the pub for prize giving all within a few metres of each other. This led to everybody hanging around the one area which gave us a chance to check out the competition – unfortunately there was a lot of it.

At 11am, the race began. 172 competitors in total. The course itself was 10.5km with a 420m climb thrown in for good measure. The first 3.5km were straight up to the summit on nice wide fire roads which gave plenty of opportunities for overtaking, or being passed, if like some of us you ran off like a hero at the start – only for your calves to give in after about 2km! First Sportsworld member to the top was Paul, followed by Jakub, Liam and myself who were running as a group cross country style at this point. From here, there was a 2km fast descent followed by another steep climb back up to the summit again. Paul was only visible at the summit as we reached the peak for the second time. Again, Liam and Jakub were way too close for comfort as I reached the top. A very fast descent of the original climb ensued back to the village and to the finish – main objective here – stay ahead of the 2 lads. Thankfully I managed this and together we all passed a good number of people on the way down.

Sportsworld finishers as follows;

Paul Mitchell 12th
Colm Kennedy 18th
Jakub Splawski 20th
Liam McFadden 29th
Helen Dixon 95th
John Fitzgerald 121st
Brid Higgins 155th
Charlie O’Connell 169th

Check out http://www.imra.ie/ for details. Yet again, our ladies would have claimed a team prize if they had just one more team member so with the meet and train over for a while maybe this is a perfect time for a few more of our female members to discover the joys of hill running. The next race is Saturday week in Tibradden (just south of our Ballyboden lap).

Report By: Colm Kennedy

The Woodie’s DIY Irish Indoor championships at the Odyssey Arena Belfast attracted all the top class track runners in the country. Without fail our sportsworld colours where shining brightly in the 3,000m. Our Girls did extremely well.

4th Aoife Brady time of 9.53.40
5th Catriona Jennings time of 9.57.33
9th Crona Brady time of 10.23.92

Well done Girls. We are all very proud. For full results see link below.

http://www.athleticsireland.ie/content/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/irish-indoor-results.pdf

Report by Orlagh Flemming

Meet & Train Swords Feb 2010

The Meet & Train Cross Country Series concluded on Sunday (Feb. 7th) with Swords once again the venue. Although the course was quite muddy surely I wasnt the only one who preferred that to the freezing cold of a fortnight ago. Congratulations to Edel Madigan who won the race, and completed the Series sweep by winning each of the four races. (joining our own Breda Browne in the record to accopmplish this rare feat)
With strong runs were Susan McDonnel in third and Ruth Kelly who showed a great spirit finishing fourth after taking a fall in the opening lap. Also with top ten finishes were Louise Nolan (in fifth) and Mairead O’Callaghan (in sixth)
Well done to all the girls who ran and see you on prizegiving and relay on 21 February in Irishtown.

Race Report by
Natalia Sokoowska