Virtual Medley Road League – Round 3 – Mile (6th/7th Mar)

Running a mile isn’t as easy as you think

It’s rare for most of our senior and master members to race a mile as hard as they can, but round three of the Virtual Medley Road League gave them the chance. They were warned in advance that even though it’s a relatively short distance, they needed to treat it with respect because it’s a lot tougher than it sounds. Running one mile as hard as you can go is hard, everyone would go anaerobic much earlier than normal and would be fighting lactic build-up a lot earlier than expected and if all went to plan they would be begging for the finish line with 100m to go. With these, or perhaps despite these, somewhat chilling words of advice and encouragement, over seventy adult Club members ran the distance on their own within 5k of home on either Saturday 6th or Sunday 7th March, timed themselves with a GPS device, submitted proof of their times, and the age graded results were confirmed on Monday 8th March. As predicted, some surprised others who had been beating them over the longer distances with a burst of speed they have not had a chance to use before. For some, this round will be their best score and for others it will be their worst, all because of the shorter distance.

An interesting observation on the results is that if this had been a real race, it would have been very exciting. Six women ran between 5:44 and 5:55, and eight men ran between 4:55 and 5:10, which would have seen some close finishes. As expected, the top three places changed from previous rounds, and the top three men in round three were Maurice Looby, Eddie Newman and Evan McCormack, and the top three women were Vera McCool, Mary Stuart and Aisling Corcoran. Round four is a 10k, and will be run on St. Patrick’s Day in conjunction with the fundraiser for the new track.