GLENDALOUGH RACE - Report by Douglas Barry
Colm Rothery (Ajax) showed a muddy pair of heels
to the rest of the field for a brief period before disappearing
into the dense mist on a tricky Glendalough course. At the start,
the winner's mantle seemed, on a sunny warmish day, to belong
to any one of Rothery, Cnoc's Aonghus O'Cleirigh or the speedy
road runner Gerry Healy (Raheny) who had easily won the second
round of the Leinster Championship on Round Mountain.
However, as the leading pack who had been joined
by Gorey's Albert Mulhall topped the Spink, overlooking the Upper
Lake, two significant things happened. O'Cleirigh and a small
group took what appeared to be the more direct line towards Lugduff,
and drops of rain began to spatter from an ominously glowering
sky. The recordholder Rothery who had been conservatively tracking
the leaders decided to take the longer but easier route. As the
leaders waded through rough heather further on, a disconsolate
O'Cleirigh and Healy looked up to see the pony tailed Rothery
with a 400 metre advantage at the top of the mountain.
Healy, an inexperienced navigator, broke away in
frenetic pursuit, only to be enveloped by the rolling billows
of a rain sodden mist. Disorientated, the unhappy Raheny runner
lost sight of Rothery and only after some considerable time managed
to attach himself to a chasing group. O'Cleirigh a superb navigator
and a former Irish orienteering champion chased across the peat
hags to try and locate the key way point Lough Firrib.
Now Lough Firrib hardly deserves the grandiose title
Lough. A muddy pond in a wilderness of heathery peat hags, it
is notoriously difficult to locate. In swirling mist with visibility
intermittently down to 10 metres, so it proved. O'Cleirigh when
he emerged some time later on the summit of Camaderry found himself
alone sans Rothery with only a view of the 1998 Tour de France
Wicklow Gap stage far below him to cheer him up. He chased on
down to end up second some 10 minutes behind the winner Colm Rothery
at the exposed finish point with its spectacular views.
Rothery had had a relatively untroubled run and wiped
nearly 8 minutes off his own record. Australian Mike Walters finished
third two minutes behind O'Cleirigh with a bunch which included
the luckless Healy a further 20 minutes back. Crusader's Roisin
McDonnell finished first woman, while Joe Feeney took the veteran's
prize. I personally took the frozen, soaked, and cheesed off official
award as bedraggled finishers were still coming in two hours after
Colm Rothery………