Striders making heatwave running look cool

Despite the weather being as warm as it was this weekend it wasn’t a deterrent for many striders who ran in many different events and parkruns over the Bank Holiday weekend.

First of his 2 race was Norman Mawhinney on Saturday 12th in Maghera for the run the carn event with a 1430ft climb before a speedy turnaround and run back down from the top of Carn Tóchair mountain and he completed his run in 40 minutes 37 seconds very well done.

Moving to the ancient monument at greyabbey and the gaithouse greyabbey ultra running event around a 5K course on a race time of 12/6/3 hours and the weather as it has with this event has a history of being very especially in 2021 with a Northern Ireland record temperature being set at Ballywhatticock and the heat on Saturday wasn’t quite as warm but very unrelenting

Our most popular race option for our club runners was the 6 hour option with Darren Johnston opting for the 12 hour and Mark Arnold doing the 3 hour option. Graeme Black was the furthest of our 6 hour runners completing 8 loops. Naomi Magowan completed 7 loops with a quartet of Allyson Graham, Beverley McKee, Rachel Boyle and Nicola Forsythe completed 6 loops and Jenny Taylor completing one loop. Mark Arnold completed 3 loops and Darren Johnston completed 4 loops.

His Second event of the weekend was the Termonfeckin Half Marathon and Norman Mawhinney who is a massive fan of this event and recommends this event or others. He completed his run in 1 hour 32 minutes and 48 seconds to round off a great weekend of running.

As always the weekend wouldn’t is the weekend without our weekly parkrun hit and we had runners on 3 different continents with America and Australia featuring as well as more local events with some of our local events being unavailable due to 11th night festivities. Our most popular option was Bangor Parkrun shortly followed by Stormont.

Our next open event is our annual run the trails at Mount Stewart and this year the event consists of a 5K and 10K alongside the kids 2K. This will happen on Saturday 2nd August 2025 and entries are open and are filling up so don’t hesitate and get entered what is a very scenic place to run .

Our club training is on going and is as always is our all abilities themed training where you can be inspired to be quicker or fitter or just to have to ability to train with others and to have that social aspect of training with others regardless of ability. Monday and Wednesday night session our main sessions with the majority of sessions being at LDP 7.15 unless specific sessions at other locations including Killynether and Scrabo for Jill training, Island hill for distance interval sessions and Messines road for our lamppost and other shorter mixed interval session or our beach training sessions either at Millisle or Ballywalter beach. Our injury and progression group sessions will be starting again after a successful 5/10K graduation last Thursday. These sessions are Tuesday and Thursday 7.15 meeting at LDP and will help progress whether it’s aiming to get a little faster or increase your ability to build your running distances or just to ease yourself back after injury or an easy progression from couch to 5K.

As well as these sessions we have social runs that are non coach led but are available and welcoming of everyone with no set speeds and Friday Night Social Run 6.30 Conway Square and has a 5K loop starting and finishing at the Square with the reward of tea coffee and often donuts at Tim Hortons and we had a Sunday Morning Social Run 9am Conway Square everyone welcome and there are no set speeds or distances for anyone to have to keep at so an ideal opportunity for new members to meet and chat and get to know others and enjoy the social side of striders with tea coffee and refreshments at bow bells afterwards. To end the week our weekly Sunday Night trails starting from the mountain road and are very welcoming with a pace to be welcoming for everyone.