The Club had a very successful day at the Rock and Roll Half Marathon which incorporated the National Half last Sunday, and our performances from the Senior group were very impressive.

Foremost as always was Captain Emilia, leading the charge from the front and winning All Ireland gold in her category with ease, despite not planning to run at full tilt for this one. Clearly inspired by her, both Katie Penrose and Clodagh Dunphy combined with Emilia to claim All Ireland Masters gold for the ladies team, a significant result given the amount of teams in the competition.

Our whole crew ran excellently, despite the conditions they had to face. A five mile headwind to begin with, after that they’d a nice few miles of hills and drags to face. Both Derek, Noel and possibly more had corralling issues, it was like a novelty XC race for them. Annette smashed her sub two hopes. Mark was ever smiling and continues to improve in his first year with us. Geoff was battle scarred at the end but has knocked out yet another week of decent mileage as he sets his sights on the marathon.

With it being the Rock and Roll Half all our runners had the unique problems of the dodging of inflatable instruments, revelers in fancy dress and those happy chappies wielding selfie sticks on the route which impacted on their times when it came National Championship (Gun) times rather than the RnR times.

Not an easy day out, but they can’t all be! Well done to all, some super performances out there!

Times on the day in the Half from our 7pm crew:

Derek Finnegan 1:22:43

Emilia Dan 1:29:46

Katie Penrose 1:36:28

Clodagh Dunphy 1:37:35

Annette Conroy 1:51:22

Mark McDonald 1:43:30

Geoff Hamilton 1:52:05

Noel Duffy 2:01:15