IMRA season 2011

T runner

ocnoc wrote: »

A pair of light road racers are ideal for this race if you are willing to sacrifice a second or 5 on the final short descent. Last year the descent was a bit wet and I felt the fear in flats.
However, something with studs would have been horrible for the other 95% of the race.

You are an experienced descender though. I'm assuming the poster is a beginner hill runner who will more than likley brake (like 90% of the field and me possibly) on the steep final descent. If you brake the quality of your grips on your runners comes into play. If you lose the skin from yoru arse youll lose more than a second or 5.

Im wearing these

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Balance-MTE101GH-Green-Silver/dp/B003VYC1AO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=shoes&qid=1303917653&sr=8-1

225 grams, mountain runner grip but shallower lugs, great on hard pack or road too. Hopefully the perfect summer hill racer....or a pile of ****e ill let ya know........

nerraw1111

Superb race this evening and incredibly well organised given the numbers. Well done to all involved.

Great advertisement for IMRA. Perfect conditions and spectacular views. By Jaysus was it tough. The sprint for the bottle neck was tense lol

rovers_runner

Excellent race in all areas this evening, forgot how much I enjoyed it a couple of years back. Understandable delay at start but don't think anyone would mind too much.

More of the same for the next few months please !

Slogger Jogger

I believe c. 20 people didn't make the cut-off time for being in the queue in time. Had to be implemented or race wouldn't have been seriously delayed.

Had to laugh when one girl got to the top of the registration queue and asked to pay by card

Great crowd out and great evening for it. Well done Tom Hogan on a rare excursion from the sunny south east.

Quack13

Great race. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Though I found it seriously tough at parts!

First and last third went ok for me..middle third I struggled to shake of a stitch which hampered me slightly.

I finished around the 36 min mark, which was ok for my first run I guess. Would have rather been slightly quicker to be honest, but what you gonna do.

Some fellow told me after that this was one of the easier ones...!!!

Race was well very organised. What a lovely evening for it too.
Everyone there seemed in good spirits and anyone I spoke to was bang on..

Howth next week so..

(Stark, I will PM you my details for the MyIMRA access now)

WithCheesePlease

Have to say, really enjoyed the race last night. And what an evening for it too. The views coming down off Bray head were something else - when I took the chance of looking up from where I was stepping that is.

I started too far back and got caught in the bunch going up the first section so was reduced to a walk for most of that but still got home in 35 minutes so happy enough with that for my first outing. Will know better for next time!

Great value for €7 too.

Roll on Howth...

Edit: does anyone want to set me up with myIMRA access??!

ElectraX

WithCheesePlease wrote: »

Edit: does anyone want to set me up with myIMRA access??!

If you PM your details I can do this, although IMRA site appears to be down at the mo, so may have to be later today or tomorrow.

WithCheesePlease

ElectraX wrote: »

If you PM your details I can do this, although IMRA site appears to be down at the mo, so may have to be later today or tomorrow.

Details sent - thanks! And no panic, I've noticed the site going up and down myself.

Ar Strae

Quack13 wrote: »

Some fellow told me after that this was one of the easier ones...!!!

Ahh don't mind these lads! :rolleyes:

I actually reckon Bray is a fairly tough starting race, straight up and down, it's kinda full-on. Howth is much more runnable, Prince William's Seat is a gem etc

Beautiful night for a run yesterday, had a bit of a bad run though..timewise it seems similar to last year (difficult to work out given the different lengths of courses) but a grim 29 places worse off

Including losing 8 fought for places on the last descent after passing Gerry

8!!

My lack of ability to downhill is killing me! I'm getting crucified once it turns in any way technical.

And as for barefoot runner in Luna sandals who passed me.....

On the rocky bits too! :eek::eek:

Still one done...got the men's mini marathon 10k on Monday (same chipped course as the Great Ireland Run only cheaper and there's only 220 people running it not 8000!), Howth on Wednesday and a 5K on the following Saturday so hopefully I can get back into it.

Ro

P.S. As to the website I thought that maybe some hard data to indicate the status of it would help our admins rather than anecdotal advice. So I set up a Web test which tries to load the main page every 10 minutes for 30 days and registers any issues. It will give daily summaries, broken down into things like "How long it took it to resolve the name on the DNS, how long it took to get the first byte, how long to get the last byte" and so on.

Hopefuly it will give the proof we need that the website needs to have its capacity greatly increased. I'm assuming thsat the site is up all the time but it's just rejecting people if too many try to access it at the same time

Ro

Dunebuggy

Ar Strae wrote: »

Hopefuly it will give the proof we need that the website needs to have its capacity greatly increased. I'm assuming thsat the site is up all the time but it's just rejecting people if too many try to access it at the same time

Ro

If you read back two pages of posts - you will read where I mentioned that additional capacity will be added to the server later on in the week

No proof required !!

Ar Strae

Dunebuggy wrote: »

If you read back two pages of posts - you will read where I mentioned that additional capacity will be added to the server later on in the week

No proof required !!

Brilliant! I vaguely remembers a post about adding capacity but wasn't sure whether it was on the IMRA forum or here and what timeline was in place. Sweet. cos the report I got in this morning makes pretty grim reading! Site unavailable for up to 6 hours at a time etc.... must be those pesky new runners from Bray!

Looking forward to the new beefed up server!

I have a bunch of new foes I need to Mark *mutters darkly*

Ro

Status Start time End time Duration
Timeout warning 04/29/2011 01:40 04/29/2011 04:35 2h 54m
Timeout warning 04/29/2011 00:09 04/29/2011 00:19 0h 9m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 23:28 04/28/2011 23:38 0h 10m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 22:57 04/28/2011 23:07 0h 10m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 22:36 04/28/2011 22:46 0h 10m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 16:04 04/28/2011 22:05 6h 1m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 14:40 04/28/2011 15:24 0h 43m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 14:19 04/28/2011 14:30 0h 10m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 12:12 04/28/2011 13:39 1h 26m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 11:51 04/28/2011 12:01 0h 10m
Timeout warning 04/28/2011 11:29 04/28/2011 11:40 0h 11m

T runner

Bray report Here

clubcard

Great value for €7 too.

very cheap and photos look great on the site.What are the prizes in these races?

Donny5

clubcard wrote: »

Great value for €7 too.

very cheap and photos look great on the site.What are the prizes in these races?

Usually vouchers for the winners, and then wine and chocolates for the rest, including a few spot prizes. I won a nice map once as a spot prize for volunteering.

Slogger Jogger

@clubcard. Glad you enjoyed it. Prizes are nominal enough reflecting the entry fees. 1st, 2nd and 3rd are 25, 15 and 10 quid vouchers with prizes of 10 quid vouchers for age category prizes (e.g M40). If you do your 7 Leinster League races and 2 volunteer stints you are entitled to a Leinster League prize at the end which is usually pretty good. Last years was a technical top. Previous year was an inov8 bum bag.

Slogger Jogger

Congrats Brian Furey winner today from Jason Kehoe in 2nd. Local runner Robert Malseed was 1st to the top by c. 30 seconds, not bad running for a man that was hit by a car whilst running in a recent half marathon in Omagh!

Great new route. Sun drenched conditions.

donothoponpop

Congrats too to BAC runners Mick, John, and Eamonn- first team. Well done pilgrims!

Slogger Jogger

Well guys, this was brilliant. Rob Malseed is quite the uphiller. Would have been good to see the Tonalegee and the laker lead 2 in this race today. Minor gripe about the bit on the road at the start and the end, apart from that it was super, made all the better by near perfect weather conditions. Views from the top were to die for - a few steps the wrong way and you would!

Slogger Jogger

donothoponpop wrote: »

Congrats too to BAC runners Mick, John, and Eamonn- first team. Well done pilgrims!

I demand a Connaught team prize :D

Slogger Jogger

Well is this the best IMRA start line this year?
http://www.imra.ie/photos/view/id/51710/

Antigrav

Slogger Jogger wrote: »

Well is this the best IMRA start line this year?
http://www.imra.ie/photos/view/id/51710/

I preferred it as the finish line myself

Some race all right. Couldn't have had better weather. A class Connaught Champs all round.

We had to use the road at Dadreen to avoid land access issues. You couldn't beat that spot as a start/finish point for RD and families, so reckon we should keep it.

Thanks to John Mac for recce and route map, and to Dermot and Vivian who stepped up yet again. The dedication to the cause is admirable

T runner

Slogger Jogger wrote: »

Well guys, this was brilliant. Rob Malseed is quite the uphiller. Would have been good to see the Tonalegee and the laker lead 2 in this race today. Minor gripe about the bit on the road at the start and the end, apart from that it was super, made all the better by near perfect weather conditions. Views from the top were to die for - a few steps the wrong way and you would!

Did Brian F go a little astray on the descent? If he was in second at the top youd have fancied him to win.

Slogger Jogger

It'll be interesting to see people's routes on Mweelrea. I went up the lower of the 2 lines and back the higher. The latter was pretty direct to the farm gate and worked out well.

Peterx

T runner wrote: »

Did Brian F go a little astray on the descent? If he was in second at the top youd have fancied him to win.

Robert was a class apart on the climb, Brian and Tom Blackburn crossed one river too many on the way up giving themselves a longer line. I crossed one river as well which was a mistake as Zoran and Bernard made 80m on me from that move by staying to the left.
Brian summited maybe 30 seconds ahead of Bernard who summited just a second or two in front of me, I took a second or two to drink in the view and then hurled myself after him. Initialy I thought I was descending well but the sad reality was Bernard was getting away and I still couldn't see either Robert or Brian.
Down off the col and Bernard is just powering away but a sneaky thought swam into my mind as Brnard appeared to be chasing Brian who was descending back down the river gully - a much longer dogleg then my straighter plunge over to the gate corner. Ahh T you were in my mind as I attempted to sneak over to the right without the two lads seeing me.
It was very good runnable ground and Bernard and Brian disappeared behind a fold in the ground, hopefully swallowed up and never to re-appear:)
Robert was coming back to me but the road came along and he again showed his speed but somehow Bernard appeared like a jack in the box 200m before we left the lovely bogside and he hit the road ahead as well. He must have descended very fast as my line was much shorter then the one he was on initially following Brian. Hw said afterwards he was on a line bisecting mine and Brians after he saw from the back of his head that I hd headed off rightward.
Brian's Garmin run was 10.89km and mine was 10.27km which says it all really. He was gutted and spent a lonely 5km pounding up and down the beach before returning to the carpark to discover his fantastic run on Craogh Patrick was enough to earn him the title of Connaught Champion for a second time.
Brilliant route, fair play to John MacEnri for discovering it and Dermot and co for running with it.

Peterx

Slogger Jogger wrote: »

It'll be interesting to see people's routes on Mweelrea. I went up the lower of the 2 lines and back the higher. The latter was pretty direct to the farm gate and worked out well.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/83324374

Here's mine Mick if you can add it to the map dat would be cool..

Slogger Jogger

I'm the blue line. Peterx the red line which is more direct. Again, the ascent was via the lower of the 2 lines.

ocnoc

IMRA Race Report wrote:

And I have to say I was amused by the traffic-jam bringing us to a complete stop not far from the start as a stream of impressively concerned male runners enquired if the blonde female who had tripped was OK :-) Great to see such concern for fellow runners :-)

I laughed... and then began to wonder why they didn't use the perfect opportunity to vault over their fellow fallen racer and get a good 30sec gap :P

LL runners these days aren't aggressive enough!

Good hussle by Conroy on his first win - shaking like a leaf after his efforts apparently. Respect!! :cool:
memory of been on my hands and knees in a car park vomiting... so totally worth it

Ar Strae

ocnoc wrote: »

I laughed... and then began to wonder why they didn't use the perfect opportunity to vault over their fellow fallen racer and get a good 30sec gap :P

Yeah noticeably less people offering to help up the lad who face-planted in the gorse about 200 yards further on :-)

The results are in a state o' chassis! Apparently I only pipped M70 stalwart Seamus Kilcullen at the post by 10 seconds :eek:

Ignoring the positions and going off hand-crafted percentages (I know, I know..cries of "LUDDITE!!" abound) it was a grand enough run for me but never seemed to get into it and had gas in the tank at the end..just mentally didn't have the cojones for some reason

Still...this year is about completing LC and LL and then anything more is a bonus. Just good to be racing!

Seriously though, I think the course was well marked. Just keeping a marshall at the foot of the hill coming back from the deerpark and one at the "go around or go home" point would have been fine I reckon.

Delighted to see the headphones law being enforced!

And gotta say, the website is humming along now after the upgrade ...nice one guys!

Ronan

Quack13

Throughly enjoyed the race myself, although I also felt I had a little bit more in the tank at the end. Althoguh middle third of 2nd lap I floundered with a stitch (again!).

I missed the registration due to googlemaps sending me to the wrong location for The Summit Inn! I ended up in some housing estate at the bottom of that massive hill near the main st in Howth at 7.05.

So had to run all the way up to the top, which meant I was fairly spent by the time I got to the starting line.

Have to say though (pain aside) it was a really nice race. The forest trails were great!

WithCheesePlease

Really enjoyed the race. I even started closer the front this time to keep myself under pressure to keep up with the pace and not get complacent behind a line of walkers. Was half gutted then to see the results so skewed, was dying to see how I'd have faired over all. :rolleyes:

Still though, my second IMRA run under the belt and loving every minute of it.