Three full womens teams and four full mens teams ran in the County Senior Road race Championships in St Helen’s and came home with team silver in both races with Catherine Murphy winning individual bronze in the womens race. Having left the balmy evening in Enniscorthy it was a shock to step out of our cars at St Helen’s Golf Club to be met by a chilling north easterly whipping in from the sea. However after warming up running conditions were good in the April evening sunshine on an excellent course.

Twenty seven women went to the startline of the one and a half lap, 5K course with the hill to the finish line being tackled twice into the stiff wind. This was a good test of stamina and led to considerable changes in position between the first and second laps…(Note to self…must do some more endurance training!) Jackie Carthy took the honours for Kilmore finishing 20 seconds ahead of her team mate Fiona Kehoe. A well bandaged Catherine Murphy was first Slaney Olympian home in bronze medal position. Kilmore took team gold with Beth Cardiff who finished in sixth place completing the team. The Slaney Olympic trio of Catherine, Martina O’Sullivan and Siobhan O’Shea took silver with Ciara Wilson, Ann O’Sullivan and Niamh Coman of DMP claiming bronze.

There were fifty two runners in the mens field for the 10K race on the same course. Tom Hogan quickly moved in to the lead for SBR. The two St Killians runners, Niall Sheils and James Clooney were close behind along with Dominic Ryan of SBR. Kevin Murphy led the charge for Slaney Olympic. In the end it was a one, two for SBR with Tom first and Dominic second with Niall taking bronze for St Killians. There were four to count for the mens teams. The SBR team of Tom, Dominic, Tommy McElwaine and Denis Moynihan won gold. Kevin Murphy, Dave Barron, Martin Monaghan and Jim Stafford took silver for Slaney Olympic with St Killians winning bronze (Niall, James Clooney, Padraig Moriarty and Lee Savage).

There was great socialising at the Slaney Olympic tent afterwards where Slaney Catering provided very welcome hot tea, sandwiches and cakes to the wind chilled runners and supporters. Well done to St Pauls for putting on an excellent race and to John, John Joe and Nora from the County Board for standing so long at  the exposed finish line to record and calculate the results. The results below were taken down by your scribe in the chill of the late evening and some of the team placings were calculated in the early hours of the morning so apologies for any inaccuracies.

Results