CNOC Evening Series kicks off at Donadea

When the stress of exams comes around, you know the CNOC summer series isn't going to be to far behind to help transform the stress of the mind to the burning of the legs. The first event this year was in Donadea Forest Park in North Kildare. Eileen Loughman took the lead in planning the course, and the Shorts highly involved in org as usual. Conor took control of the SI, with Don head sausage cook after being relieved of gate duty.

Three courses were on offer, the long at 5.7km and medium at 3.6km. The short course was a quick jaunt around the lake.The faithful began to arrive and vanish into the forest, as the car park filled. The beautiful evening was even tempting out a few of the locals.

On Long the fastest times were Christian Foley Fisher 42:05 and Kevin O Boyle in 42:34, only for the party to be spoiled by Marcus finishing in a time of 40:32. On Medium, Chris Blau ran it home in 35:33 closely followed by the young Sanni Kymalainen of Setanta only 12 seconds back, Brian Hill finished off the top 3 almost 5 mins off Chris. Caoimhe O Boyle contuined her winning form coursing to victory on the Short with Ciana Jones 4 mins back. Nora Casey was 29 mins with six runners clocking in at 32 mins.

Jukola Training in Donadea you say? A commotion at the start saw Seamus O'Boyle, Ruairí Short and Colm Hill take off in a mini mass-start at breakneck speed. People stood back as they accelerated across the car park - what no one saw was the Seamus running to the left, Ruairí and Colm following, Shea stopping and saying, right guys so where are we? The curses and abuse were let out before Ruairí relocated and set the pace. About 30 mins later they re-enter the car park, Colm reaching the map exchange seconds before Seamus, both pick up a medium map and are off again, a few minutes pass and Ruairí enters the map exchange and leaves without breaking step. After completing the Medium course, Seamus cruises in 1:01m clear of Colm - with Ruairí running strongly by himself to finish 5 mins off the pace. (Shea - 9.3km, 32 controls in 55:31!)

The sausages are eaten, the tea is drunk. . . only one thing remains. The car park begins to clear as the sun slowly falls. With tired legs, Ruth, Eileen and anyone else lucky enough to still be around set out to collect the controls at the far reaching parts of the map . . An enjoyable afternoon, and the perfect excuse not to do a bit of study.

Colm Hill