River Valley parkrun

  It was an amazing weekend and it is not over yet. We thought there might be a need for a further update but this was made a mute point when Mo sent in his own run report for the weekend.  Over to you Mo It was virtually a race? Dublin Virtual Marathon 25th October 2020 Autumn marathons for many of us and for differing reasons are just part of what we do. The summer long runs in sun protected hats, shades and singlets   give way to autumn leaves, darker mornings, extra layers and the latest bobble hat fad!  The covid pandemic has taken away the activities of many, but runners are lucky in many ways in that we kept going through training pods and club closed races etc. The Dublin virtual marathon was a partial solution to the problem. The training continued; at least until Level 5 kicked in, but there were no proper build up races to test race conditions, (bar the virtual app races!). So would it be a race, a tempo run, something in between? Up to a week ago, running...

  It's Marathon Weekend! Looking at the image above and we are reminded of the introduction on screen of Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia when he took about 8 mins to arrive. If you zoom in you can just about make out Richie's motorbike headlight as he marshalled Aoife around for the 26.2 miles. It felt very windswept and lonely out there but it really wasn't as the support from all the River Valley community was tremendous.  There's Aoife's starter pic when she set off from the community centre at around 8:30.  She wasn't the only setting out yesterday. Niall was also getting started on his journey and he brought his beloved black bag that he would just not be parted from. In fact 26.2 miles later and he was still wearing it.  Really not sure if that is Imelda's start pic or her finisher pic as we are not sure if there was much difference despite her completing it in 4:02. By contrast we definitely know this is Bryan's finisher pic. He ran a fantastic ...

  The Display outside Raheny Shamrocks Raheny Shamrocks said goodbye this week to Pat Hooper and some of the footage from the funeral was evidence of their wonderful tribute to the man.  However they are not finished yet. Raheny Shamrocks know that Pat was a big fan of parkrun and St Annes in particular and they thought a fitting tribute would be to get some (not) parkruns logged to honour Pat.  St Anne's numbers are way over double their normal average and it is wonderful to see it. However you may have seen our post about how to complete and log a (not) parkrun run? This was because we received a number of queries on how to log a run and how to view the scoreboard. Both Tralee and ourselves are only too aware that once people become aware that if there is a bit of a competition going it has a habit of generating momentum. Hopefully we will see St Annes grow in numbers from this weeks big leap. We are reminded of the movie quote by Admiral Yamamoto in the movie Tora Tora...

  #31 Diary of a War Correspondent It feels a bit like we are reporting on a conflict all week with news coming in on all fronts. The WhatsApp has been going bananas not just with our own crew but also with communications coming in from Tralee. Our posts to FAcebook are being shared far and wide and the competition is definitely hotting up! So where do we stand right now? Top number of participants: Tralee with 108 Top number of runs: River Valley with 204 Kerry vs North East Fingal aka Dublin: Dublin with 143. No time for Dublin to gloat. None of the Dublin parkruns are way above average with only being slightly up on previous weeks. Inch Beach on the other hand recorded their first runs since July when (not) parkrun started. We suspect they may get a bit more in the future. Likewise Killarney House are up this week and may build on that. The Dublin team has a weight advantage in the average number of runners but it is not an insurmountable challenge. All of this, of course, is at...