It’s been another busy week for North Down athletes with club members involved in road, track and trail races in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Scotland and Germany, with excellent results across the board as usual.
On Saturday, Sophie Rankin raced the U15 girls 800m at the all-Ireland Indoor Championships, in Athlone, setting another PB of 2:25.51 despite recent illness. Josh Liggett came 3rd in the U19 60mH and Harrison Jamison came 2nd in his 400m heat in a PB of 50.12 new PB and 4th in the final after also battling illness all week.
In the NI Mountain Running Association junior team selection trials starting from Donard Park, Coco Smith finished 2nd in the U16 girls. Maia Johnston was 4th in the U18 girls and James Blease finished 8th in the U18 boys section, with all the athletes gaining some great mountain running experience. Holly Blease was ill and unable to participate in the trials, however on her past performances she was selected for the NIMRA U20 team.
Johnny Elliott raced at the Run One More event at the Mary Peters Track on Saturday. A fundraiser for the Made for More childrens’ charity, runners had to run 5k on the hour for up to 12 hours, challenging themselves to run one more hour or one more 5k. Johnny won the challenge, completing 12 x 5ks at an average pace of just over 4:30 minutes per kilometre.
The Omagh Half Marathon is traditionally one of the biggest local early spring road races. The race always sells out quickly and more than 4300 finishers tested themselves over the undulating course around the town and surrounding countryside, setting an early mark, or checked their marathon training progress for upcoming spring races in London, Boston, Belfast and elsewhere.
For those racing over shorter distances the 5k race allowed athletes to speed around part of the half marathon course. Sebastian Mair was 5th overall and 1st U15 in 17:21. His younger brother Harrison finished 24th in 19:18.
Matty McParland was the first of the North Down AC half marathon finishers. In cold, wet and windy conditions he crossed the line in 18th place in 1:14:06. Chris Couchman 1:29:02 and Christopher Ballentine 1:29:40 ran strong sub-90 minute races with Tom Agnew 1:34:28 and Darren Edgar 1:34:29 also running strongly. Lucy Cheatley was 1st FJ in a superb 1:35:32 followed by Andrew Muir 1:36:22, Clair Quigley 1:38:26, Jill Connolly 1:41:45, Sarah Wilson 1:44:33, Kim McCourt 1:52:57, Karen Keery 2:00:42 and Emma Hegarty 2:07:06. Cliff McCausland played a gig on Saturday night, cheered on by Noreen McCausland, and like true rock stars, they turned up to run off very limited sleep in a remarkable 2:06:47 and 2:30:14 respectively.
https://myrunresults.com/events/36th_spar_omagh_half_marathon__5k/6178/results
Mark Carberry faced similar windy conditions at the Tom Scott 10 Mile in Motherwell on Sunday running well to 12th place in 55:02.
4 more North Down AC runners enjoyed better half marathon weather than their clubmates in Omagh, choosing the Berlin Half Marathon instead. Simon Boyle was the club’s first finisher, completing the iconic course in 1:26:06, 9th M60. Emma Fox ran a PB of 1:42:26 as she finished her 5th of the Super Six halfs with just Copenhagen left to complete the set! Susan Black finished in 1:49:07 and Lynne Kerr ran a super 2:08:14.
