From Portaferry to Newcastle to Ballyshannon to the parkruns – all the craic over the jump!

Warmup
If you are one of our eager participants trying to suss out the Dubs before Friday’s Giant’s Trail Race – welcome along! Here you’ll find some nuggets of information about what your marshals and hosts get up when they’re not organising a race for you all! So here, I asked the missus to rate my listening skills and she said, “You’re an 8 on a scale of 10.” – I really don’t understand why she told me urinate on a skeleton. Right, enough of that, let’s see what we’ve been doing:

Portaferry 10 Mile Road Race
The annual mid-summer race in Portaferry took place last Tuesday evening. If you can remember back that far – it was actually a grand auld evening for it too! This rolling coastal course is always a popular local event – consists of the full 10-mile race and an optional 5-mile relay event. As in previous years we were well represented on the night:

That is how we do a club event! Outstanding running performances all round at this event – the summer training is continuing to pay off! Special mentions to Roisin who was first home in her age category and to the team of Nessa and Danielle who were second home in the female relay team race! We hope everyone made it home safely on Tuesday, as I heard that there was some bad flooding between Strangford and Portaferry! There were camera – but not a single photo 🙁

Sea 2 Sky
Miserable. T’was flippin’ miserable on Friday evening. Newcastle normally plays host to a sunny summer’s day out with ice-cream – but not this year! For around four miles of this route, its sedate, but there’s a two mile middle section up the side of Drinahilly which adds some spice. Things really hotted up this year with murky unknown conditions underfoot. We had five runners proving that we’re not just a fair weather club:

That was a challenge on Friday evening – excellent running all round from our blue tops. Special mention to Claire who was fourth female overall (and third in her age category) who went sideways and faceplanted into a bog at one stage! It was great to see a mix of old hand and newbie Dubbers taking part and expereicing the perils of trail running in one evening. We have some cool photos to share courtesy of MySportsPhoto:

Lakeside Triathlon
Beside Assaroe Lake (and make sure you read that right) in Ballyshannon was a scenic (the organisers own words) sprint distance triathlon. A 750m swim in the calm waters of the late, a 23km cycle on an excellent surface topped off with a 5k run including the iconic local footbridge. One blue soul attempted this one:

Nice one Paul – not quite how you keep pumping these out, but you keep impressively doing them! The 23km cycle must have been fun – out to Bundo and back, hopefully you got to stop for some retirements on the way! Brilliant swimming, cycling and running – makes your tried just looking at your Strava of the event, but at least the weather mostly held for you. Pauls’ always a good one for the photos:

parkrun
Those more eagle-eyed among us might have noticed a clip of some runners on Saturday morning television. Sky Sports treated viewers to a snapshot of the local area and caught the runners heading along the beach at Portrush. If you were weather watching, you’ll already know that Saturday was set to be one of the better days of the week, so that meant setting the alarm, choosing an event – and not forgetting your barcode:

Nice – twenty blue tops at ten different parkruns – fantastic running everyone! Grab you hat and get ready to tip it as placing this week in third was Nessa on her first trip to the Ardgillan event! We had a trio of new course PBs set by Brendan (at Valley), Julia (at Orangefield) and Paul (at Stranmillis College). Finally, proving that summer really hasn’t ended yet, we had a stack of newie course benchmarks set by Alastair (at Falls), Anne Marie (at Falls), Stacey (at Valley), Michael (at Orangefield), Ronan O (at Narin Beach) and Roisin (at Southwak). Phew, and even the odd photo too:

Warmdown
Finally, this week, can I pass on my thanks for Fracnes for stepping up for the Flashmob pakrun – which was supposed to be at Colin Glen. Sadly, a last-minute cancellation scattered the group and one three made it to Falls – but we will be back in Colin Glen a little later in August – watch this space. I took a wee week to myself there an I got into watching videos of lakes and rivers – in fact, I am watching a live stream right now.

Live long and prosper.

Disclaimer: Every effort was taken to ensure the results above are correct (I am a little busy with GTR stuff!) If you’d also like to make a complaint, then you’ll automatically volunteer yourself for writing duties