Weekend Round Up - May 17th-19th, 2019

Ballymacoda and Buttevant 4 Milers:

On Friday night we had 1st and 2nd in Ballymacoda 5k. Brian and Shane literally duked it out for the win from the start . With Martin Drakes live commentary stoking up the fires Brian made a bold dash with 200m to go and outsprinted his training partner to take the glory in 21.54. Shane was only 2 seconds back in 21.56.

Donogh was 7th in 23.32, Jens was 27th in 25.31 and Conor was 32nd in 25.57. Well done all, a great race for a great cause.

At the same time the Buttevant 4 mile was taking place and in a showing of our new extended reach around the county we had 2 runners competing. Eadaoin had a storming last 800m to grab the 3rd spot on the podium in a great 26.30. Donal was 4th overall in 23.07, which should set him up nicely for John Buckley 5k on Tuesday night.


County Masters T&F

We had a 100% hit rate at the county masters in CIT on Sunday. Every single East Cork athlete who ran won a medal. This can only be down to diligent training and superb racing ability!

Stephen O'Brien on his track championship debut won the 1500m overall and took out the M35 title with an imposing performance in 4.41. Frank Hayes was seen with two medals around his neck in the car park after winning the M50 3k in 10.01 then afterwards coming 2nd M50 in the 1500m in 4.54. Tim Crowley won the M35 3000m in 9.43 which is an 11 second improvement on his Leevale Open Sports time from a few weeks back. Denis scooped silver in the M55 3000m and Eric was 3rd in the M50 3000m. Excellent stuff.


National League and Irish Milers Club:

We had three amigos driving all over the county at the weekend. They were in the search for quality track races that are run to an accurate timetable, and they found them.

Firstly on Saturday at the Irish Milers Club in Iirshtown the two Kevins raced the "GV Ryan fastest 5ks". The name lived up to expectations with both running PB's. Kevin O'Brien ran sub 15mins for the first time with a 14.54 and Kevin O'Leary on his 5k track debut ran 15.35 knocking another 5 seconds off his already impressive PB. Fiona, sick of winning all the local road races by a country mile, went in the search of a challenge. She ran an excellent 4.57 for the 1500m which placed her last overall, exactly what she was looking for.

On Sunday then in Templemore, round 1 of the National League was on. East Cork Division (a combination of all clubs in East Cork) have entered a team in Division 1 and to count you need to have athletes competing in 15 out of approx 20 events. Kevin O'Brien ran the 1500m and the 800m and picked up 12 points for the team with 3rd placings in both races in 4.08 and 2.04. Kevin O'Leary had the tougher task of following up his 5k PB from 24 hours earlier to race 5k again. He looked at it as a good test of his strength for the upcoming Cork marathon. Kevin ran 15.45 with a huge last lap to pip Nenagh AC athlete in home straight. This got him 1st place and 9 points for the team.

Fiona having studied track and field racing strategies overnight brought a new game plan to the race. She tucked in wisely to the main pack for 800m then went to the front and wound it up for the last 700m to neutralise the finishing kicks of her crop-top wearing competitors. With a storming last 300m Fiona won her race 6 seconds faster than the day before in 4.51 and got 9 points for the team.

The team results have not been posted yet but it looks likely that the womens team is 1st or 2nd at the moment going into Round 2 and the mens team is in 4th place. Round  2 is set for June 30th in Athlone IT.