Well over a hundred runners are expected from every corner of Northern Ireland to attend Springwell Forest between Limavady and Coleraine for the 6 th annual Bell’s Conservatories 10km run on Saturday 23 rd September at 2:00pm.

This prestigious event has brought many class runners to the local area, with British Olympic athlete James McIlroy being the top runner over the 5 year history of the event so far. He won the event in 2004, but local runner K Hurley won the event last year in a slightly slower time but in very competitive fashion. Expected front runners include Nicholas Rooke of Ballymena Runners, who has been running very well recently in races throughout Belfast and Springwell Road Runner Colin Loughery, who has had a marvellous season to date. This event is perfect for the local “fun runner”, as the course is fairly flat and well sheltered throughout the forest trails. One of the best local races around, we recommend you attend from 1:00pm onwards to give time to sign on and complete an appropriate warm up. Everyone is rewarded, with a generous prize list for the front runners and sandwiches for all!

Big thanks must go to the continuing support of Bell’s Conservatories who contribute most of the sponsorship for the race, which is necessary to run an efficient race!

Now on to other news, big congratulations to Chris Denton and Harry Reilly who competed all the way down in Longford for the 5 th annual Marathon/Half Marathon event on 27 th August. A brilliant day for the 800 running fanatics, the scent of Vaseline and Vicks could be smelled from miles around! Again, Chris did the club proud with a super 17 th in 3:04:14 on the full marathon course, with Harry “the Marathon Man” maybe needing a name change to the “Half Marathon” after attempting the shorter distance! Under the name Noel Adair (???), he “dared” to achieve a PB, which he duly did in 1:28:39 for 43 rd (sorry for the bad humour!) Excellent results from some of the fastest club members we have, junior Jason Wilson also should be congratulated for his efforts over the past few weeks! He achieved 9 th overall and first Under 20 runner in the recent North Down Country Park Challenge! Results of 11 th, 38 th and 16 th helped Jason to his best series result to date! He will now be training hard for his run at the British Junior Mountain Running Championships in October!

Also, our adventurers Shirley Park, Ivan Park and Steve Curry should not be forgotten for their hard work when they battled home in 4th at Westport’s first Galeforce West event covering a 200k course on foot, bike and kayak over 3 days.