Northern Ireland Mountain Running Association
www.nimra.org.uk

Weekend Update

Thu 2 September 2010 - Ian Taylor

World Masters, Poland

Deon McNeilly was 7th in the M45 category out of 76 athletes, first of the Irish runners in this age group.  The team finished 4th, but only two points away from a silver medal.

Best Irish result was Mags Greenan winning the W50 category while Anne Sandford was 6th in W45 group.  Ireland gained a silver medal in M50, a bronze in M35 and were 4th in the M40 category.

This was the best Irish team result probably since the World Masters started.  Plan your trip to Italy for mid-September 2011.

Full Report

Ultra Tour of Mont Blanc

Due to heavy rain, mudslides and course markings disappearing, the main UTMB race was cancelled after four or five hours of running.   The TDS route never even started.  The race was then re-started the next day but for 1000 selected athletes from the UTMB & TDS entrants over the second half of the course, after the weather improved.

The earlier CCC of 62 miles was stopped for most runners after 50 miles and 4663 metres of climb.  This was only 11 miles from the finish so CCC athletes can feel justifiably disappointed.  However by this stage 37 CCC athletes had completed the course.  Results are a bit confusing but at Vallorcine, after 50 miles, the results were

Hannah Shields   17h14m14s, 658, (City of Derry Spartans)
Martina Elliot,  17h31m37s,  656, (Lagan Valley AC)
Donal O'Kane, 19h46m24s, 1122,  (BARF)
Barbara Brown, 19h46m28s, 1127  (Mourne Runners)

Obviously all our athletes in the CCC were on target to complete the route within the 26 hour time limit.

Brian Linton and Fred Hammond joined the UTMB re-start at 10 am from Courmayeur (after  no sleep) with Brian finishing in  17h24m7s and a overall place of 349 and 151 in category.  Fred, after having already run 4 hours of the original UTMB, made it to Vallorcine after 18 :11 hours and then retired ranked 1158 overall and 172 in category.

The race forum suggests that many athletes were disappointed with the decisions to stop.  The race videos show heavy rain, slippery conditions and many leading athletes ill-equiped to cope with the conditions.  The fact that three athletes had died on a race earlier this year no doubt influenced the race organisers.

Thanks to Brian Linton for the on the spot report and making more sense of the results than I could.

Congratulations to all for your "success" and comiserations on not being allowed to complete the races.  If you are feeling frustrated at not completing the event, you could do the Causeway Coast Ultra on October 2nd   See

Causeway Coast Ultra