East Antrim Harriers AC

It’s great to be back racing again! Here are some of the Harriers who were in action last night in Race 1 of the Woodburn Forest Series. The hooped vests featured heavily at the front end of the race with 4 of our runners finishing inside the Top 10. Well done lads! 4th Nick Weston - 16.58 6th Brandon McKeown - 17.21 7th Chris Collins - 17.29 8th Rick Hill - 17.49 13th Gareth Blair - 18.28 28th Billy Reed - 20.24 31st Peter Fraser - 20.33

We are constantly amazed by the achievements of our own Billy Reed, but this past weekend he gave yet another incredible endurance by completing the Denis Rankin Round for 2nd time. The Denis Rankin Round is a circuit in the Mourne Mountains covering 90km and 6500m in ascent. The challenge is to complete this within a 24 hour period, but Billy managed to complete it in a time of 15.52, which we believe to be well inside the top 10 recorded times for the round ever. Here's a short video made by his daughter Chloe to document some of the adventure!

Tonight we held our own in-club Handicap race in Sixmilewater Park. This race was over 8 miles on grass and was for the McKillen Shield, which is one of the oldest trophy’s in the club and has been competed for almost 100 years! Mark McElhinney secured the victory with a super run and a great effort to hold off Ross Mercer on the last lap who had cut through the field for 2nd. Chris Collins came 3rd with even mile splits and consistent running in advance of his upcoming Ultra race. Well done all who took part and thanks to the time keepers and support crew.

Great to see another of our runners make a return to competitive racing this afternoon at the excellently run “Afternoon of 5000s” event organised by North Belfast Harriers . Rick Hill ran strongly to finish 5th in his race in a new personal best time of 17.28. We look forward to seeing more Harriers in action in the coming weeks!

It’s been great to see some of our club members back racing again over the past couple of weeks. First up, Chris Collins took on the Half Marathon distance at Down Royal last Saturday, finishing in 14th position in an excellent time of 1.21.32. Then today Mark McElhinney (pictured) & Ross Mercer both took part in the Virtual Belfast Half Marathon. Ross, becoming something of a virtual specialist after a superb marathon effort last year, ran 1.20 while Mark proved he’s been training hard over lockdown by running 1.33. We look forward to seeing more of our runners get back to racing over the weeks ahead.