Mourne Way Series
There was something for everyone at this series of multi-terrain events situated between the towns of Newcastle and Rostrevor. OAC managed to cover all 5 running events on the day, ranging from the 5k race up to the 52 mile Ultra Marathon event.
Weather conditions were fairly atrocious to start off with, and there were weather warnings in place from the heavy rain. This died off fairly early on, but the ground was wet, slippy and mucky throughout, which would inconvenience some of the longer distance runners. Regardless, there were strong performances throughout.
In the 5k race Andy McIntyre won first place with a time of 19m05s. Joy McAleer was second and first lady home with a time of 23m45s
In the 10k Ian Grant was first OAC to finish in a cracking time of 46m04s, Alan Montgomery at 50m01s and Liz Leitch with 51m20s
Remaining times were:
Jill 53.09
Sharon Corken 57.23
Verity Cornford 1.02.24
Victoria Murray 1.02.24
The Half Marathon event began at Spelga Dam and finished at Rostrevor, It had several challenging hills, slippy grass and several cold wet patches to impede progress, meaning the following times were pretty remarkable
Darren Marshall finished well under 2 hours at 1h56m08s, Next the OAC lady mountain specialists arrived with Louise Lemon finishing in 2h00m08s, Sharon Dickenson in 2h10m52s and Sarah Steer 2h11m46s.
Remaining times were:
Julie McKimm 2h12m03s
Mark Williamson 2h15m11s
Catherine Fearon 2h57m49s
Selina Myles 2h57m49s
In the Marathon event, Michael O’Donoghue finished his 3rd Marathon in 14 days in a time of 6h02m01s.
Darren Houston, who was doing the Ultra Marathon, finished after 32 miles and joined everyone else at the finish in good shape.
Overall we showed we can win shorter races, we can do consistently well in hilly races and the road runners can learn valuable experience from events like this. Thanks to 26 Extreme