Garristown, north county Dublin was the place to be this Sunday morning when local club Garristown Flyers put on their annual promotion The Windmill 5K and 10K runs.
This year’s 10K incorporated the Dublin 10K road men’s Championship (the Women’s equivalent will take place in the Women’s mini-marathon on the June weekend).
Eight Raheny men toed the line on a challenging undulating course. The sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky but there was a wintry chill in the headwind that confronted the runners in the long run through the Village that led to the finish.
First Raheny man home was David Rooney in second place overall behind Tudor Moldovan.
Rooney in turn led a Raheny senior team of Mick Kehoe, Gary Aylward and Eamonn Traynor to a memorable victory, Dublin Champions in the first ever running of the event.
The excitement of this victory was added to greatly when the over-50 masters team title was annexed by the quartet of Tom Loftus, Dave Gargan, Jim Keogh and Christy Reilly.
And hoovering up of Championship medals did not stop there. Individually David Rooney headed home with a senior silver, Mick Kehoe and Eamonn Traynor plundered silver and bronze respectively in the M50 category.
Jim Keogh who had never previously won a championship medal, suddenly like the buses now had two when winning a silver in the M55 category to add to his team gold.
Speaking of buses Tom Loftus and Christy Reilly, two stalwarts present and past of Dublin Bus had a memorable 1 – 2 in the M65 category. Not forgetting Gary Aylward’s super gold at M60.
While the men, heavily sated with medals bemoaned their times, runners are never fully happy in comes the only Raheny woman Angela Charlton with a stunning new PB of 48.30 taking a phenomenal 5 and half minutes off her previous best.
Some days are Golden.
Meanwhile at the Mallow 10 mile Michelle Carey clocked 79.18 and Chris Troy 86.37.
