NI Road Relay Championships 2015
On Saturday 3rd October 2015, a huge crowd of athletes and spectators descended on Victoria Park, Belfast for the Northern Ireland Road Relay Championships, hosted by East Belfast club Orangegrove AC. The event really seems to have captured the imagination of the local running fraternity and this year’s entry, made up of almost 500 athletes representing 136 Teams, must surely have been a record. The increase in popularity in recent years is no doubt due to the hard work and dedication of the host Club who organised the event with military-like precision and on the day looked after the needs of runners and spectators in tremendous fashion.
Junior Races
The ‘Festival of Running’ commenced with individual Primary and Junior races over a variety of distances. Mackenzie Murray and Daniel Atkinson were 4th in their respective races and highlight of the day was East Down’s double podium placing in the U15 Girls race with Hannah Gilliland in 2nd place and Edie Carroll securing 3rd place.
Senior Races
The Masters Ladies relay race got the senior action underway with teams of 3 runners each running a leg comprising 2 laps of Victoria Park, a distance of 3,380 metres. East Down had 2 teams taking part and they acquitted themselves well with a 20th and 24th place finish in a strong field of 30 teams.
In the Senior Ladies race East Down again managed to assemble 2 teams, finishing 8th and 24th in a field of 33 teams. Our congratulations to the Newcastle AC team who won an exciting contest to be crowned NI Senior Road Relay Champions for 2015.
The Masters Men’s race was over the same distance but this time involved teams of 4 and East Down entered 3 teams, finishing 14th, 27th and 38th in a field of 44 teams.
The final race of the day was the Senior Men’s race with an elite field of Northern Ireland runners representing their Clubs in a battle for the prestigious title. East Down AC fielded just one team and club star Benny Teer took time out from his Dublin Marathon training to represent his club and complete the first leg. Next up for East Down was 1500 metre track specialist Neil McCartan who was therefore running in a race of over twice the distance he is accustomed to. Benny and Neil put in two of the best performances of the day, running identical times of 9:57 for the 2.1 mile course, and their combined efforts resulted in East Down being in pole position at the halfway stage. The final 2 runners, Ciaran Denvir and Andrew Telford, battled bravely in their legs to bring the team home in a very respectable 7th place of the 29 competing teams.
Jersey Marathon
On Sunday 4th October East Down AC’s Barrie Atkinson travelled to the Channel Islands to take part in the Jersey Marathon. Barrie was offered a place in the ‘elite athletes’ field courtesy of his terrific time of 2 hours 36 minutes in this year’s London Marathon. Unfortunately Barrie’s training schedule was hampered by a nagging injury which he was unable to shake off and which also affected his performance on the day. Despite this, Barrie still ran a typically determined race to finish in 7th place overall in a time of 2 hours 47 minutes in a very high quality line up. The race was won by Aleksey Troshkin of Russia in 2 hours 18 minutes.
This coming Saturday sees the first fixture in this year’s Cross Country League, the Comber Cup, hosted by Ballydrain Harriers at Billy Neill Playing Fields, Dundonald. The action commences with Primary School Races at 12:00 pm and East Down AC expect to field strong teams in all categories.