HILL and DALE SERIES
The first of this year’s Hill and Dale series hit the trails again on Thursday night, and how quickly the time flies, as the aches and pains of last season’s efforts only just subsided a month ago writes Joe Quinn.
I forget whether that’s an age or a memory thing, but I remembered where to start, and more importantly, finish. It’s quite easy to do that as in H & D the finish is usually at the top of a hill, or sometimes even a mountain, which of course was the origin of the old adage “What goes up must come across the finish line”.
To the race itself Paul Burns was first East Down man home taking 15th place in 38.08 with the next 4 of his team mates Michael Cultra, Dee Murray Michael Andrews and Davy Foster all finishing in the top 35.
CATEGORY WINS FOR BRIAN and JOANNE
As he did last year Brian Hamilton took first place in the Over 65 category and Joanne Foster took a very creditable first in the Ladies Over 35, with Niamh Kellett 2nd in the Ladies Open contest. All of which augurs well for the coming 10 rounds.
TITANIC FOOTNOTE
A footnote on last weekend’s Titanic 10K. I had seen 2 other East Down runners apart from those mentioned in my report go past me at 7.5K but couldn’t understand how I had overlooked them. On re-checking the results I discovered that the 2 missing men Gavin Hynds 42.44 and Gary Small 50.49 had shown their club as East Antrim Harriers and East Coast AC respectively. So a word of warning to them and all others to be careful when entering online as typing in the club name calls up all the options, including those mentioned, and it is easy to click on the “wrong” one. Though perhaps if you think you are going to have a bad run or simply want to hide it, or if you want to escape censure for not wearing club colours, it might seem a good way to avoid notice.
NEXT WEEK
Next week it’s Race 2 in the H & D Series in Tollymore on Thursday night and on Saturday it’s the Ballynahinch Lions 5 and 10K races at 1.30pm.
