Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Mountlucas parkrun takes place in the Mount Lucas wind farm. It is a single lap trail course and you get to pass right underneith the turbines: their foundations are just off the side of the trail and the blades pass over your head.

Lovely to have the one lap and I got a warm welcome from the volunteers. Thanks everyone, and happy 8th birthday!

I completed Kilkenny Triathlon two years ago when the swim was cancelled due to water quality. That meant the last open water race I had finished was IRONMAN Copenhagen three years ago and my confidence was not in good shape coming into this race. I registered for the try a tri as it is the same course as the sprint but with a shorter swim.

I got down there and registered fine. Despite the cloud cover it was baking hot, especially once we had our wetsuits on. We walked down to the swim and I felt nervous, especially when getting into the water. But I did it, and despite plenty of in-water nerves, too, I finished the swim.

The bike was pretty standard. Some back ache towards the end but I generally just had fun. I don’t think I used my aero bars much.

The run course was different to previous years. Last time it followed a similar route to the parkrun course with two laps around the castle grounds. This course took us onto the side of the river behind the castle and then back along the river in a lovely one-lap circuit.

My overall time was:

1:23:46

In 2023 it took on a duathlon format with an additional run at the start I cannot compare the two. Slightly slower on the cycle an slightly faster on the run, though it was probably a little flatter. My T1 looks horrendous but the mat was at the bottom of the hill by the river and included a long run up to transition.

I’m not fuss about the times in any case, I just wanted to finish a triathlon with an open water swim again and I did that so job done. I’m proud of myself. Also, it was fun!

Lovely parkrun along the canal. It looks like an out-and-back, but it’s actually a loop as the canal towpath and greenway run parallel to each other. Technically then, it is one of the few single loop parkruns! It was supposed to be dry all day but rained the whole time. Classic Ireland.

Skerries is a popular triathlon that takes place up the coast. We organised a relay team for the club consisting of Chris L swimming, Hugh cycling and myself running. I’ve never done a traditional relay before so I was excited to give it a go.

The biggest pain was that registration closed at 7:15 in the morning. I’m sure lots of races start this early and I’ve just forgotten, but I did not appreciate the 5 am alarm to meet Chris at 6:00. Still, all was well and we got down to the race in plenty of time. At which point there was not a lot to do because we had very little to set up in transition.

The swim starts off down the beach and goes out in the bay and then along the coast to Red Island where transition was located. Despite not having raced a sea swim before, Chris was one of the first out of the water from wave two, which is where all the relay swimmers were placed. He was so fast he almost took us by surprise. The way it works in relay is you have a transition pen where you hand over the timing chip ankle bracelet.

Hugh theen set off on the bike. There was a strong headwind going out meaning that the athletes on the time trial bikes had a big advantage. Despite this, we think Hugh was around 11th fastest overall on his road bike. I was nervously waiting in the pen at this point. And I was nervous. We were in the lead and I did not want to blow it, but I also knew how much it was going to hurt. I got a proper warm-up in and then did some pacing while we waited.

My turn on the run. It was a wierd experience. Usually, I have come out of the swim near the back and spend the entire run overtaking people. But today I was out with some of the faster athletes and while I still managed plenty of overtakes, there were also some people that came flying past me.

At this point, I did not know what gap we had on the team in second place. I thought I knew what their runner looked like but wasn’t sure if maybe I had missed him. Maybe they were only five minutes behind and he was an 18-minute 5k guy. The run course is a beautiful out and back along the beach and as I came to around the 3.5/4k point, I saw the second place team’s runner heading out on the run. At this point, I knew we had it in the bag! Cue a classic finish line celebration.

Some may try to diminish our victory by saying that there were only five relay teams in total and that everyone else was just there for the craic. But having never won anything in triathlon before, I’m chuffed to bits. You can only beat who turns up on the day. It was a well organised race at every point so a big thank you to Fingal Triathlon Club for organising.

Still chasing down some Ses for the snakes challenge. This one was number seven. Lovely parkrun. Four laps of the sports field, so not too exciting there, but the volunteers were lovely, it was fairly flat and they had a nice cafe with toilets in the leisure centre so there nice to hang out after the run.

Every year, Blackrock Atheletics organises a run down to Teddy’s ice cream in Dún Laoghaire and the club buys everyone an ice cream. This year, I finally made it! Thank you to Gerry for organising.

It’s a parkrun. On a beach. You literally run ip the beach for two and a half kilomtres and then turn around and run back down again. It’s amazing.

The surface is surprisingly good. The sand is hard so you do not get the exhaustion of running on soft sand. It is probably not a PB course, but it’s not difficult going, either. There are a few streams to jump over and some seaweed to dodge which is all part of the fun.

It was raining heavily the day I went and continued to rain throughout the entire run. None of that killed the fun for me. No chance of sunburn, exhaustion or dehydration. It was beautiful. Where else would you want to be on a rainy Saturday morning?

Except you cannot be here every Saturday. One of the quirks of the events is that they can only run the event at low tide so it only takes place around half of the time. It is well worth the trip if you can make it, though. This is a contender for my favourite parkrun.

Lovely parkrun. I received a warm welcome at the gate and after the run, where they provide a spread of biscuits and hot and cold drinks. It is three laps around the park and has a few lumps but no serious hills. Thank you to all of the volunteers for a pleasant morning.

2025 marked the fifth outing of Around The Park, Around The Clock: an event that involves running three laps of Woodhouse Moor (approximately 5km) every hour for 12 hours.

We have had a range of weathers over the years and this year was mostly good. Last year was rainy all day while 2023 was glorious sunshine. This year was mostly dry but with some heavy rain around the 2pm loop. This meant lots of people joining us for the morning loops, one of which had around 40 of us, and a quieter afternoon.

I had a rough time last year, both at ATP ATC and in life generally. No such problems this year, thankfully. I did some some stomach issues for the last two hours but nothing serious. it was hard going, running wise, though. I really felt tired for some of the middle loops and that never really got much easier despite the introduction of caffeine. But all good fun.

A big thank you to Toby for organising it, Andy for watching the bags all day, and everyone else who turned up to mind base camp and cheer. Also to everyone I ran a loop with, especially Robyn as we took in most of the loops together and had a lovely catch-up.

Pontefract parkrun takes place on the race course. It features one loop around the race course track and two laps around the lake. All fairly flat. Thank you to all of the volunteers for making it happen.