On Saturday 16th July, local ultra-runner Gary Warnock, set a new Denis Rankin Round (clockwise) course record, with an impressive time of 17 hours 16 minutes.
Well done Gary. Outstanding achievement.
Category Archives: Blog
County Antrim Fell Runner Completes Round
On Tuesday 12th July, County Antrim fell runner and member of BARF, Aaron Shimmons, completed a clockwise Denis Rankin Round in a time of 19 hours 28 mins.
Round report to follow soon.
IMRA Trio – Round Report
On 29th May, Pól O’Murchu, Andreas Kusch, and Paul Morrissey tackled the Denis Rankin Round. Here is their round report.
Our successful completion of the Wicklow Round in June 2015 had given us a thirst for more adventures and it wasn’t long after the dust settled on that one that we were looking around for the next challenge _ the Rankin Round was the obvious choice.
The recces started in October last year and that day out up Donard and clockwise on Leg 1 was undertaken in shocking weather. An appraisal of the maps beforehand led us to suspect that the Mournes would be somewhat of an alternative prospect to the much more familiar Wicklow Hills, most noticeably the tightness of the contour lines and their more compact nature. That outing confirmed these suspicions with the steepness of some of the gradients to be dealt with being the most obvious difference. There are only a handful of places in Wicklow where that degree of steepness can be encountered while the Eastern “High” Mournes each hill seems steeper than the last!
By the beginning of May this year we had our homework done, and it was now a case of waiting for a weather window. The end of May had been mooted as a possible date early on and this was now put out tentatively depending on nature’s grace…would a dry weekend in summer be too much to ask? Continue reading
Mervyn McCollam’s Round Report
It’s the early hours of the morning, it’s raining heavily. At the entrance to Donard Park people can be seen struggling to stay on their feet. They seem to be neither co-ordinated nor aware of their surroundings, they are not even dressed appropriately for the conditions that we have been met with over the last few hours, and which seem set to continue for the foreseeable future. This however is not a collection of Rankin Round runners, thankfully instead it is just another weekend for the young people of Northern Ireland. Granted they have been doing their own rounds, however it would seem their priorities are entirely different to my own this evening. Continue reading
IMRA Runners Complete the Round
On Saturday 28th May, IMRA runners Pól O’Murchu, Paul Morrissey and Andreas Kusch completed a clockwise circuit of the Denis Rankin Round in 23:54.
Well done guys. That’s a perfectly paced round.
Check back soon to read their round report.