IMRA YearBook launches as IMRA website guru bows out
Having fully sold out last year, the IMRA Yearbook makes a return for 2010. Again this year, it features 80 pages of articles and photographs in 8×10 inch format, which capture the magic that was mountain-running in Ireland this year.
With articles from 17 contributors and featuring the amazing photographs of John Shiels, this yearbook is a limited-edition hardcover book that will grace any coffee table. The book contains over 350 full colour photos, if you ran in 2010, you just might find yourself immortalised.
So whether you are interested in reading about the “Women of IMRA”, the national team exploits at the European Masters and other international events such as Snowdon, the yearbook should prove a worthwhile investment for your running library.
Speaking to Justin Keatinge, the moving spirit of the release, MST were provided with an exclusive content list:
• Beware the Furey of a patient man – Barry Minnock
• Crusaders and the Hills – Deirdre Ni Chearbhaill
• Dearest beloved shorts – Aisling Renshaw
• Dublin Mountain Plod – Justin Rea
• European Masters – Gerry Brady
• Helen White – Gerry Brady
• How to meet a fella! – Eva Fairmaner
• International Youths Mountains Race Challenge – Eddie McDonagh
• Introduction – Dermot Murphy
• Irish Championship 2010 – Dermot Murphy
• European Championships – Gerry Brady
• Lean Run – Barry Tennyson
• Legends of IMRA – Brendan Lawlor
• Navigation – Alan Ayling
• Race Statistics – Gerry Brady
• Rivalry – Eamonn Hodge
• Running with the night – Gavan Doherty
• Snowdon – Rene Borg
• Starting Out at IMRA – Aoife Quigley
• The rise (and occasional tumble) of women in IMRA – Geraldine O’Shea
• Thirty Years a Growing – Brendan Doherty
• World Masters – Gerry Brady
• World Mountain Running Championships Slovenia – Eoin Flynn
Paul Cullen edited the YearBook which is selling fifteen euros through the IMRA website where sample pages are available for preview. Justin Keatinge recently stepped down from his long-term involvement with the IMRA website leaving it in the capable hands of new webmaster Eoin Keith earlier this year. During his custodianship, the IMRA website gathered much praise winning the prestigious Golden Spider Award in 2008.
Off-road fans will hope we have not seen the last of his creative input into the world of mountain running…
MST will provide a further sneak-peak in the coming days as Eoin Flynn has agreed to let us publish his Slovenia article. In the meantime, interested readers can also view “Kenny Stuart and the Irish of Snowdon”, an article submitted for the YearBook as an alternative to the chosen Snowdon piece. It didn’t make the cut so read it here.
Kenny Stuart and the Irish of Snowdon
The raw facts of Snowdon: It’s the highest mountain in Britain outside Scotland and with 1085m eclipses Ireland’s own Carrauntoohil .The name means “Snow Hill” and even in summer it looks like an over-sized version of Great Sugarloaf, so the name sticks. Immediate appearances aside, it’s a physically tougher but technically easier challenge than the Sugarloaf and some go as far as calling it “a road runner’s race”.
Great Sugarloaf, Wicklow
The race advertises itself as 10 miles but falls half a kilometre short of this distinction. Yet the records are impressive: Ireland’s Robbie Bryson summited in 39:47. English fell-running legend Kenny Stuart followed eleven seconds adrift and ran 1:02:29. That was twenty-five years ago, the races 10th anniversary. Lucio Fregona holds the unimaginably fast downhill record 21:05.
We met Kenny at the press-conference as well as getting some face-to-face time afterwards and he recalled his meeting with the Irish vividly:
“Robbie pushed hard, real hard, on the ascent, he went up like a Diesel-train”, said Kenny as we gleefully nodded. We greeted his advice to have two-and-a-half pints of bitter the eve before race-day with more suspicion. Perhaps he really didn’t want his record to fall? Recounting how he did, he would tell us: “hill reps that made the legs quake ”, “70-90 miles in off-season” and “3-4 runs on the hills per week”, notes were scribbled with less scepticism.
He had not forgotten John Lenihan who won Snowdon in 1989 after Kenny had moved to the roads. Arriving famished in Sligo for the Warrior’s Run, Kenny had overeaten on pizza and felt not quite himself as John beat him into second place: “He got a thousand quid and all I got was a lousy biro,” he said not without a chuckle.
In his day, the race saw full-strength Italian and Irish teams versus the cream of the “home countries”. Today, international teams are generally development squads filled with athletes closing in on their full international debuts or promising youngsters such as Joe Simpson and Caitriona Buchanan, both Scotland, who went on to win this year!
Snowdon plan to bring back the days when Kenny, Robbie and John jousted on the slopes of Eryri and teams from Norway, Slovenia, Germany and Kenya are due to attend next year and Ireland should not be discounted, as late as 2007 Eoin McKenna had the third fastest descent on the day and the team four in the top-25.
Hopefully Snowdon’s revival will go hand in hand with Ireland’s.
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