April 30th 2025 – Blue riband events and the return of the Graded Leagues

The summer road racing season has begun in earnest and in the past two weeks have seen the familiar combination of the Ballintotis 4 followed by the East Cork Roads in Ballynoe. And, with the pandemic a distant memory and the MTU track fully back in use, Ballynoe was followed swiftly by Graded League action to whet the appetites for the upcoming long evenings.

Ballintotis 4 Mile – County Road Championships:
For the second year running the Ballintotis 4 Miler doubled up as the county championships and, as is usually the case, the weather gods were smiling on East Cork on Holy Wednesday. An earlier than usual start and blazing sunshine ensured that everyone was over the finish line before dark – just about…

Superbly organized as always, over 1200 runners (athletes?) took part and East Cork had its customary strong presence with over a quarter of the top 40 finishers wearing the maroon singlet. Although it is now three years since we last won the event we still had some notable performances and plenty of county medals in the bag.

On a day when the course record was reset by Leevale’s Ryan Creech, Mike Harty led the club home in 3rd place overall (19:29). Frank O’Brien kept his powder dry at the start and waited in the long grass before pouncing on Paul Hartnett in the final stages to finish 4th with Paul 2 seconds behind in 5th place. Frank’s 19:45 was a new PB over the distance and it also secured individual novice gold. After a busy few weeks, and returning from all types of injury and intrigue, Tony rocked up to give his customary Ballintotis performance, finishing 7th in 20:24 to complete the gold medal-winning senior club team.

Novice club silver was secured with a team made up of Frank, Nicky O’Donoghue, Diarmaid Collins and Brian Harty. Following a late dash to the shoe shop, Diarmaid used this race to re-introduce himself to the East Cork running public, streaking away from training partners Brian and Donal Giltinan over the final mile to finish in 21:53 – just rewards for strong recent training form.

On the masters side of things, Mike and James McCarthy, who was returning from hibernation, secured an M40 one-two with Kenneth Kelleher winning M45 gold. As things stand, the club has the M35 club silver with a team comprising Mike, James, Kenneth and Diarmaid but this result is subject to scrutiny as Nicky is older than the County Board seem to have given him credit for.

Tamzin Muldowney ran a stormer of a PB (23:41) to finish 4th overall in the ladies’ race. She was second novice and also picked up senior club bronze and silver club novice medals on East Cork teams which also included Annelise Hutch, Niamh O’Connor and Norah O’Brien.
There was plenty further representation from the club and full results are detailed below. Well done to all who brought home the bacon!

East Cork Road Championships - Ballynoe:
Club bacon was not on the menu last Thursday night with servings more of the individual variety. On a damp and murky evening, the ladies and gentlemen of the East Cork Athletics Division descended on Ballynoe for the East Cork Road Championships – the annual battle against gravity on the notorious Ballynoe Hill.

In the 3k women’s race, Tamzin commanded the field to retain her title, winning by nearly 50 seconds over Midleton’s Sinead Falvey.

Tony Forristal also retained his title leading Nicky O’Donoghue and Diarmaid Collins (backing up his Ballintotis form) to an East Cork 1-2-3 over the testing 5 mile course. Brian Harty and Donal Giltinan were 4th and 5th to ensure a clean sweep of the top-5 positions. Despite this dominance, and with the top 3 excluded from scoring, there was not enough club representation to secure a team medal of any colour this year. No doubt this will be debated at length at the next AGM.

Return of the Graded Leagues​:
Regular graded league events made a long-awaited return to the MTU track last Friday evening and attendance was strong on the night. The leagues, incorporating the county championships, will be held over 5 nights from April to July and will be a valuable proving ground for those hoping to participate in track championships at Munster and National level (and beyond….) over the summer.

The headline event was the 3k where Tony and John ‘Speldog’ Spelman squared off against each other for the first time proper since a legendary 3x1k CBS session last summer. John nearly upset a jet-lagged Tony on that evening and on Friday he got one over on the Kilkenny-man. Tony played it safe through the first 2k or so, perhaps minding himself after his Ballynoe efforts the night before. John was having none of that however as he clinically dispatched his clubmate over the last 500m or so, storming home for the win in a highly impressive 8:55. Tony, no doubt plotting how to sharpen up his sprint finishing, trailed home 2nd in 8:57 with only 3 seconds covering the top three. Ciarán McNamee came home 6th in a none-too-shabby 9:35 while Norah O’Brien made a return to track action in the opening 3k race finishing 12th in 12:20.

In the 800m, Frank easily won his race in 1m 55s over Leevale’s Daniel Buckley and Eoghan O’Connor of Belgooly AC.

The next night out is on 15th May with the mile and 5k on the menu. The 5k will double up as the county championship so will be a competitive one.

Other news:
There has been a lot more racing over the past few weeks and detailed results are below. Let me know if anything was missed. Of note were:
- Nicky taking the overall 2024-2025 Cloyne 4k series win with victory in the March edition
- University track action for the usual suspects
- Frank running a handy 5-and-a-bit mile leg while representing his other club, Newham & Essex Beagles, in the SEAA 12-stage road relays in Milton Keynes. As the name suggests this is a road relay race with 12 legs – 6 long legs (5+ miles) and 6 short legs (c. 5k). Frank took the 9th leg helping his club to an 18th place finish after a combined 4 hours and 33 minutes of hard running.
- Brian Harty also went international by winning the Granard Easter Festival 5k in Longford
- A club debut for Eoin Hartnett in Ballintotis
- Olwyn Reidy completing her second marathon in Manchester on Sunday and hastily announcing her retirement from marathon-running afterwards. Until the next one…