East Down had 17 runners at Larne on Saturday for the Premier Power Half Marathon and a significant number of Personal Bests were recorded, boosting morale for those who have targeted the Belfast Marathon in May.  Leading the squad home was the ever improving Philip Vint, knocking 5 minutes off his time last year with a 1.23 finish and 47th place in a high quality field, followed by Michael McKeown in 1.32.  The first of the in-club duels however saw Mark McDowell 1.32.48 just heading Declan Teague by two seconds, surely an object lesson to the latter in not speaking to your rivals until you cross the line,  with Kristoffer Fegan recording 1.33.  Stevie McCartan was well pleased with 1.35 and Raymond Milligan confirmed his recent good form in training with 1.36, a full 18 minutes better than his gastro affected effort last year.
Gerard McAuley had an excellent warm up for his Marathon debut with 1.47 with a ruthless effort, no pun intended, to overtake Ruth Francis, who in fairness was suffering from stomach cramps but who clocked 1.48 in her final warm up race before jetting off to Capetown for the Two Oceans Marathon over a 36  mile distance in 2 weeks time – Best wishes to her from all at the Club.

Colm Surginor was ecstatic to break 2 hours for the first time, clocking 1.56 with debutant Charlie Ataliotis also under that barrier on 1.58.  Paul Rogan and Kieran Fitzsimmons, 2 more first timers were inseparable on 2.04   But in spite of all these fine performances pride of place has to go to Tracey McDowell and Helen Vint  who clocked 1.55 and 1.56 respectively and Bernice McCann who accompanied by husband Frank carved a massive 7 minutes off last year's return with 2.15. It was Tracey's first attempt at the distance and Helen showed how well regular training pays off by bettering last year's time by 10 minutes – both Mark and Philip had better look over their shoulders in future as the patter of tiny feet from behind will be Women Behaving Well.

Overnight successes? Like most things in life success comes from hard work and if you're out there wondering if it's worthwhile,  keep at it and rest assured improvement will come, just remember the 4 little words which paid off for this week's heroines over the past year  - Per Se Veer Ance.

JIMMY'S TEN WALKERS

It has been brought to my attention that reference to the efforts of the over 100 Walkers who participated in Jimmy's Ten last week was not included in last week's reports of the event and I am happy to rectify this inadvertent omission. From its inception East Down AC has encouraged Walkers to join in and they have responded in significant numbers, contributing to the totals raised and donated to charities over the years. So well done to all who made the effort this year, especially the mothers on their special day and we look forward to seeing you all and more again next year when the Walk will be available under a new, more structured format. Remember the date Sunday 13 March 2011.

32 MARATHON CHALLENGE

Great news this week with confirmation that Downpatrick has been chosen to host the Co.Down leg of the 32 Marathon Challenge which will see Gerry Duffy and Ken Whitelaw attempt to run a marathon in each of the counties of Ireland in 32 days, commencing on 2 July in Longford and continuing until 2 August in Westmeath.  The object of the exercise is to raise money for Autism NI and Irish Autism Action.

The Co. Down event, marathon 24 in the series, will take place on Sunday 25 July, over a course in and around the County town and local runners are asked to join in for the Full or Half distance or to enter a Relay team to run a smaller part of the distance. More details on the ways to take part and to raise money will appear in the next few weeks.

Meantime, Is there a 5 Mile Race in Castlewellan on Easter Monday as indicated on the Athletics NI Fixture list and if so where is it and who's organising it? Just would like to know whether to get ready to run or roll my egg.

Joe Quinn
21 March 2010