Nenagh, Saturday February 13th – We had one Sportsworld athlete (Packie Enright) at the universities indoor track & field championships at the weekend )www.iuaa.org). Representing the college he graduated from in October (the DIT) as a one year down, he elected to avoid the stiff competition at the running events and partake in the combined events; consisting of 5 events in which he had absolutely no prior experience. His reason for doing this is because last year, they were only two competitiors at the pentathlon, so Enright saw it as a chance to score some points for the college by just turning up. However his cunning plan backfired, and this year it was well populated with genuine combined eventers and all year round track athletes. As a sport, combined events is certainly no soft touch; it ranks up there with the toughest of them. It’s for powerfully built people that usually don’t have the talent to be victorious at one of the single events. Training for it is like a full time job – Moscow 80 & LA 84 decathlon champion Daley Thompson used to spend his day at the track, and I’m sure Jessica Ennis does the same. Thankfully it didn’t drag onto two days or more like it usually does. The first event for Enright was the high jump, and three failures at the minimum opening height of 1.30m meant that he’d no points bagged; in fact the only thing he was going away with was a sliced lower back and metal burn from the outdated aluminium bar. The thing was that if he scissor kicked it he would probably have got over, but he tried a pathetic attempt at a Fosbury flop [...]
Howth IMRA & Leinster Senior XC Race Postponed
Unfortunately due to the freezing conditions Howth Hill is not accessible. The race organisers have consequently been forced to postpone this race. Fingers crossed for Ticknock (Jan 24th) – another great race and very accessible – just behind Marley Park. The Leinster Senior Cross Country on Sunday is also postponed, new date Feb 14th 2010.
Lost and Found
On the half marathon trip to Waterford an iPod mini was left behind. Sean O Byrne has it and he brings it to the club each Tuesday and Thursday but he knows how to work it now and may soon become one of those iPod wearing runners.
End on an era…. for a few months anyway
Hopefully it will be the first and last emmigration party, but due to Eoin O Briens departing at the end of the month to Canada there was a serious need for a few drinks amoung Sportsworld members to mark the moment. There where cameras on the night but not good photographers or well behaved people but I guess no camera can capture the enjoyment of bouncing to Rage Against The Machines ‘Killing in the Name of ‘ or just sitting back with a drink and laughing about the stupid things. Considering the number of christmas parties people have to go to and the cold weather it was a good turnout and a great night and hopefully it wont be too long until we have to have another night out celebrating the return of Eoiney Pholonie.
Sportsworld Club Records
While we’re sorting out the sizing issue. This link will open in a new page. Eoin has done some great work gathering information on the best times for a number of events.