Picture this....an indoor track....in Finland....a race which is run over a set time rather than over a set distance....and that time is 24 hours.....and you keep doing loop after loop after loop....and you have some idea of the crazy world of Ultra-Running. Four members of Athenry AC made the long trip to Espoo in Finland to take part in this 24 hour race last weekend.
The fastest of the 4 was Valerie Glavin who ran a distance of 217.8 kms (~135 miles) in the 24 hours. In the process, she set a new Irish 24 hour indoors distance record for women. Just to put that in context, 217 kms is like running just over 5 full Marathons back to back!! It also works out as an average of 10.4 min/mile pace which when you consider time lost to necessary breaks is amazing
....(Avg pace per Marathon 4h 39m!)
In terms of position, she finished in a very credible 2nd place with Sumie Inagaki of Japan finishing 1st (240.6 kms). Valerie also featured recently here in Cork when she won the
Clonakilty Marathon back in December.
The 2nd Athenry runner home was Ruth Ann Sheehan who finished in 188 kms (~118 miles). Ruth Ann who is originally from Cork but now lives in Galway won the inaugral 50 mile Ultra-Marathon in Dingle last September.
The other two Athenry AC runners were......Mick Rice (165 kms / 103 miles) who was the winner of the Connemara 100 mile last Summer and Ray O'Connor (122 kms / 76 miles) who is the driving force behind the famous Connemarathon in April every year and recently completed his 100th Marathon.
That is incredible. Fair play to her, and her colleagues from Athenry AC. And here I am dreading tackling Cork City Marathon for the first time in June! Inspirational stuff.
ReplyDeletePhilip.
that is unreal. how do they manage to manage to maintain their nutritional requirements as well even stay awake? i presume they get breaks?!!!
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