Preview of the Cork BHAA 'Stryker' 4 Mile Road Race - Wed 1st July (8pm)
This 4 mile road race takes place in the East Cork town of Carrigtwohill at 8pm on Wednesday, the 1st of July. Registration is in the Community Hall near the Eastern end of the town. If you are travelling from Cork, you have a choice of 2 slips roads to take for Carrigtwohill off the main N25 road as shown above. You can see exactly where the Community Hall is by clicking HERE and using the +/- buttons to zoom in and out. Try changing the 'View' to Satellite or Map to see if it makes it any clearer.
As per normal at BHAA races, there will be 2 queues in the hall. One for registered runners (€5 entry) and one for non-registered runners (€7). The start point for the race is about 400 metres away.

The course...From the start on the main road in the town, you head back towards the Community Centre but before you reach it, you take a sharp left along a straight stretch of road away from centre of the town. It is a section where you need to be careful as the field is still very bunched. However, by the time you get to the railway bridge, the field should have begun to thin. There is a sharp little incline at this bridge but once you are over it, it flattens out as you turn off left at the next road junction. Now the road begins to climb slowly to the 1 mile mark. After that, you turn off left and head West. The 2nd mile involves plenty of flat running with some downhill running also as you lose the height you gained earlier. After the 2 mile mark, it's pretty flat and soon you turn left onto a long straight. Up a slight incline at the end and out onto the old main road and the 3 mile mark. You are then running inside the hard shoulder of the main road. For the last mile, you carry on towards the small roundabout and back into the town. The finish is just past the entrance for an industrial estate.
I have a copy of the route up on the MapMyRun website if anyone wants to check it out or get their bearings.

Overall...A reasonably flat fast course with no major hills as such. Last year, they got 320 entries which was only 1 up on the 2007 figure. With the current record numbers attending races, I'd expect that the 400 mark may well be broken. Try and get there early so that entry backlog can be cleared and the race can start on time.

Extra information........With the increased numbers at the road races, the finish line are getting very congested, especially in the shorter races. One tried and trusted way of dealing with the backlog is to have 2 finishing chutes. As soon as 1 is full, a 2nd one is opened. It's important that runners should stay in the finishing chute so that their number can be recorded and only leave at the end.