WEEKEND RUNAROUND

TRAINING CHANGE

Monday night training will now be held at 6pm in the CBS Grounds. This is on a trial basis to see how it suits us and the CBS.

We trained there for many years in the past up until it was no longer available due to building works.

Wednesday's Meet and Train Group continues at 6.30 (without Edmond) All welcome. 

Killarney Half Marathon

Christopher McCarthy Reports

 Jeremy and Erika Gatt Coleiro and I ran the Killarney Half Marathon this morning.

It’s a beautiful but very hilly out and back course.

All of us have run it before so knew what to expect from a challenging course.

Jeremy and I ran a few miles together before he started to pull a little ahead.

I finished in 1:32:44. Jeremy was about a minute ahead of me and Erika (after pacing for the Midleton 5) finished near the 1:40 pacers.

A great day out in Killarney, as always.

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Race report from the Rennsteiglauf, Germany, by Andre Brodkorb

It has been one of my long-term goals to participate in the Rennsteiglauf in Germany, as my dad ran the ultramarathon in the 70s and 80s, with me as a child in the support team. This time it was the other way around: I ran the half marathon, my dad and my son Luca supporting me. The route runs along the ridge of the picturesque Thuringia mountains in the east of Germany. It is Europe’s biggest trail race with over 18,000 runners and walkers covering three distances: the mad 74km “Supermarathon” (>1,800m climb), “Der Kurze” meaning the “short run” marathon, and the half-marathon for the softies like me. 

It was an early 7.30am start for the half-marathon, starting in Oberhof’s Olympic arena for skiers and biathletes (Biathlone); Oberhof has produced more Winter Olympic and world champions then the entire rest of Germany. The Rennsteiglauf is an iconic race with some long-standing traditions: Klossparty (local potato dumplings and folk music) the night before, and now 7,000 runners starting with a sing-song of the “Snow Walze” and the folk “Rennsteig Song” just before the gun went off. Ideal running weather with a chilly start at 4°C but warming sunshine. The first 9km were up the Beerberg at 961m, up and down and up and down. It is hard to pace a trail run so I went out easy with the hope that I get’em on the downhill. However, I was surrounded by experienced trail runners and everyone was bombing down the technical trails. Views were spectacular at times, running above a dense sea of clouds, the low morning sun shining through the forest, and the occasional loud “Woohoo” that I just could not keep to myself.

Water stations served traditional drinks and food (for the Ultra-runners coming after us). Water, a local Cola, a local apple juice “Apfelschorle”, hot tea, a liquid porridge drink called “Haferschleim” literally translated as oat slime (), fruit, savoury snacks etc. The Ultrarunners were offered cups of local dark beer called “Köstritzer Schwarzbier” from kilometre 65 onwards – not much left to run at that point. I finished with a time of 1:42h, which placed me 15th M55 and 270th in total, and I was very happy with this result. All runners were offered a bottle of Köstritzer or non-alcoholic beer at the finish. The atmosphere at the finish in Schmiedefeld was wonderful and relaxed as runners from the different distances and directions all finished here – the marathon runners went in the opposite direction from Neuhaus to Schmiedefeld. 

A note on the race: The Rennsteig Lauf is named after Guts Muths, the “grandfather of gymnastics” who introduced systematic physical exercise into the school curriculum, and that was in the late 1700s. He also invented modern pole vaulting among other things.

In 1973 a small group of university students from Jena went on a quest to find out the limits of physical exercise: how far can you run from dawn to dusk, and they tried this on the famous Rennsteig, a trail along the ridge of the Thüringer Wald, a medium size mountain range in the east of Germany. Within two years they were joined by hundreds of fellow runners as a kind of grass-root sports event, independent of the highly structured state-run sports system of the GDR, and this was something unheard of in the socialist East Germany. “Just let them run” said the then-acting minister for sport, which open the flood gates to an unstoppable annual and classic event attended by up to 8,000 runners, the term Ultra(marathon)runners hadn’t yet been invented. Conditions were rustic in the early days with home-made running gear, jackets, re-soled heavy runners etc. I also spotted that in the early days, most runners wore long trousers even for the long distances, due to the cold temperatures at the start. This year marked the 53rd edition of the Rennsteig Lauf, and I saw one runner who ran 52 of them… some going. It is a big local and national event, joined by Olympians and fun runners alike. The hardy 5-time in-a-row winner of the 74km Supermarathon finished in 5:11h at a mind-boggling pace of 6:47 min/mile, the course record being another 20 minutes faster (6:19min/mile). Locals are proud to host the race, and so they should be.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Killeagh Half-Marathon - May 1979

WHEN JUST FOURTEEN RUNNERS RAN A HALF-MARATHON

This article, by John Walshe, appeared in the Midleton/Youghal News, on Wednesday May 6th 2026

Last weekend, on the Bank Holiday Sunday,  over 12,000 runners converged on the capital for the second running of the Dublin City Half-Marathon, which reached its capacity shortly after entries opened back in January

Contrast this with a race over the same distance which took exactly place 47 years ago, on May 6th, 1979, around the village of Killeagh in east Cork. On that fine Sunday evening the race was just one of the many events held on the day of the famous Glenbower May Sunday Festival, a celebration which has its origins way back in the 1830s

The race was organised by two local runners, Peter Lee and Willie O’Mahony, both members of the Youghal club at the time. Willie O’Mahony’s contribution to the sport of athletics in the East Cork region has been huge, both as a competitor, administration (treasurer of the East Cork Board/Division since 1971) and event organiser. 

Peter Lee – who used to live beside the start line of the current four mile race (which this year takes place on May 21st) – was one of the few from the Cork area to run the inaugural Dublin Marathon in 1980, which he completed in 3:02:53 before going on to run 2:53:29 the following year.

The half-marathon started at 6.45pm and took in the three laps of the course now used for the four-miler. It had been measured by the calibrated bicycle method, one of the first races in the country outside of Ballycotton to be so measured. Prizes were on offer for the first four finishers, first two teams of three and the first three novices confined to Cork. There was also a signed time certificate presented to each finisher.

Entry fee was probably in the region of 30 pence - it’s worth noting that the entry for the Dublin Open Marathon later that summer was advertised as 50p. It’s certainly a far cry from the €75 which each of those 12,000 had to come up with last January! 

That Glenbower Half-Marathon of 1979 was, in all probability, the first race at the distance to take place in Cork. It had just 14 finishers – all men. There were one or two non-finishers on the three-lap course, these included a man for whom dropping out in later years would be unthinkable. However, it should be noted that 16-year-old Denis McCarthy (then of the Youghal club) had already taken part in the Cork County U17 3000m track championship earlier in the day, finishing fifth in 9:57.5 behind Finbarr McGrath (Leevale) and future international Richard O’Flynn (Bandon).

After the first of the three laps on that May Sunday evening, four runners had broken away. There were Liam O’Brien and Paul Mulholland from Midleton and the Leevale pair of Jerry Murphy and the late Dick Hodgins, winner of the National Marathon four years before. On the second time round, Hodgins had been dropped and with about a half-mile to go O’Brien finally edged ahead of Murphy but the margin on the line was just two seconds, 70:34 to 70:36. Mulholland finished strongly to take third in 71:03, over three minutes clear of Hodgins.

In the team race, Leevale suffered a rare defeat as Midleton came out on top by three points, the team consisting of O’Brien (first), Mulholland (third) and Albert De Cogan (fifth). For the first two, the race was more a means to an end as it served two contrasting purposes. To Liam O’Brien, it was probably no more than what would be referred to nowadays as a tempo-run as he was preparing for the track season. A couple of months later he would win the second of his 11 national steeplechase titles, his time of 8:52.6 a big improvement on the 9:07.5 he had recorded the year before.

Jerry Murphy was no doubt using the 13 miles as a ‘bleed-out’ for the carbohydrate-loading diet prevalent at the time. The following Sunday, on his 29th birthday, he would win the Munster Marathon in 2:28:47 ahead of Leevale clubmate Liam Horgan (2:31:44) and Michael Joyce of St Finbarr’s (2:39:16).

In honour of Peter and Willie who were ahead of their time in this promotion, attached is the certificate signed by both. And to remember those inaugural runners, these were the 14 finishers on that May Sunday evening 47 years ago:

Results...

1 Liam O’Brien (Midleton) 70:34   

2 Jerry Murphy (Leevale) 70:36   

3 Paul Mulholland (Midleton) 71:03    

4 Dick Hodgins (Leevale) 74:14   

5 Albert De Coagan (Midleton) 76:15                                                                      

6 Willie Cronin (Leevale) 76:35 

7 John Walshe (Midleton) 78:35 

8 Donal Burke (St Finbarrs) 83:13

9 Tim Mulcahy (Midleton) 84:33

10 Pat Arnott (Youghal) 84:35

11 Peter Lee (Youghal) 89:24

12 Jerry Mohally (St Finbarrs) 90:36

13 Willie O’Mahony (Youghal) 91:47

14 Tom Houlihan (Midleton) 101:00

The Joe Hourigan Memorial Midleton 5 Mile

Two New Course Records

What a fantastic night with over four hundred runners and two new course records. With Ryan Creech (23.44) winning the men's and Niamh Allen (25.10) 3rd retaining her title and breaking her own course record.

None of this could have happened without you our members putting in the trojan effort that you did so a huge thanks you to everyone of you that helped in any way.

 There are far too many to mention but race directors Ger and Maire along with assistant director Declan and Tim (signs) deserve special mention along with Bernie who was still there at 10pm last night tidying up

 Our first lady home was Eileen Leahy and our first man was Tim Hannon other prize winners were Mark Walsh and Neilus Aherne .

Graham had the idea that anyone found wearing headphones should have 5min added to their time in the official results. We had only one last night so we let them off.