Half Marathon Bonanza

[Not a valid template]The Waterside Half Marathon, incorporating the Northern Ireland Half Marathon Championships, took place in Derry on Sunday with a big field and in good conditions apart from the strong wind in the second half of the race. The event was also the final round of the Champion Chip Ireland HM Series with a generous scale of prizes on offer, many in the range of North Down athletes. Roberta Dornan and Jill Aicken took 1st and 3rd F35 series prizes without running on Sunday as they had good results earlier in the series. By contrast Julie Balmer (open women), Francis Marsh and Stephanie Hambling looked good for series wins in their categories but in order to comply with tournament conditions needed a result on Sunday so as to include two times in the last three races. All were up to it with Julie 1st open woman and 2nd overall and Francis and Stephanie 2nd at M40 and F40.

Francis, supposedly meant to be doing just enough, still finished 7th overall in 74:26 min. Julie was 3rd lady with 200m to go but had an impressive finish to finish 2nd overall and first in her category  in 87:32 min. Darren McKee in his first half maratnon did well with 87:58 min and Simon Robinson had a pb with 91:26 min. Fred Murdoch, Lynne Kerr and Pat O’Driscoll were respectively 3rd, 4th and 8th in their categories. Pat did all seven races in the series.