Uphill Coach

01/07/2025

Episode 115 of the Trail Running Ireland Podcast now out. 🇮🇪🏔🇮🇪🏔🎧

In this weeks show we talk to one of the most exciting young talents on the Irish Mountain Running scene. Jared Martin led the Irish team home in the European Championships last summer in the Elite Mens Up and Down race and he is currently preparing for the World Championships in Spain in September. We´ll chat through Jareds progress over the last few years and look at how he will prepare for the Worlds in 12 weeks time.

We also have René Borg from Running Coach Ireland who will be chatting to us about nutrition for our big Trail races, should it be carb based, should we be fat adapted and or should we look at a periodised fueling approach. It´s a fascinating topic that we can all take something from.

Everyone, get your running gear on, lets go!🏃🏻‍♂️🏃🏻‍♀️

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17/03/2025

NIMRA will host the Granite Peaks 80k/ Granite Peaks 50k /Granite Peaks 25k. Starting at Tollymore Outdoor Centre, out to the open mountain via Trassey Track. Each race goes round interior of Mourne Wall, returning to Tollymore.

05/02/2025

Plans are well in hand for the Granite Peaks weekend of racing 24th and 25th May 2025. On the Saturday NIMRA will be hosting the British Championship short race. Granite Peaks 10k. While on Sunday 25th May the big events are full on. Adding to the first and well liked Mourne ultra race the Granite Peaks 50k comes the new and even more interesting Granite Peaks 80k. Both of these ultras have UTMB index points associated with them. On the same day a revised and even better Granite Peaks 25k will take place (also UTMB indexed).

IMRA will be using the Granite Peaks Ultras to select the Irish Team going forward to the World Mountain Running Association Championships, this September. So, a lot of prestige surround our events this year.

Keep an eye on this space, NIMRA social media and our website https://granitepeaksultra.com for updates.

Meantime as winter gave way to spring this week your training plans should be ramping up in anticipation of all the great races coming.

Best wishes and see you all soon.
Ciarán McAleenan
Race Director

24/03/2024

Experience the mysterious & mythical Mourne Mountains landscape as you race across its granite peaks.

13/03/2024

** WE NEED YOUR HELP **

MMRT are currently fundraising to build a new Mountain Rescue Base at the foot of Slieve Donard and we need your urgent help with a big grant application. The more responses the better.

The new base on the site of the former St. Mary’s Primary School, Newcastle is an ideal location to enable the team to continue to provide our crucial service.

The proposed building will have a number of benefits:

• It will provide the team with a permanent base, which will provide greater certainty in making strategic planning and investment decisions

• Unlike our existing building, it will be a purpose-built structure with a layout and facilities that will improve the efficiency of the Team

• It is well located to the Mourne Mountains thereby allowing callouts to be dealt with quickly

• It is well located to the open space at Donard Park where rescue helicopters land;
It will facilitate open days for educating the public on safety issues in mountainous environments

• It will allow emergency vehicles to be stored indoors and will reduce maintenance costs

We would love your support to aid our latest funding application.

You can do two things for us:

1. Complete the online survey - https://bit.ly/3TegWn8

(Via our partners at “Speak NMD”) - Then tag and ask your friends to do the same - complete the survey in less than a minute.

2. Complete and return a letter of support - https://bit.ly/3Pg7tug

Download the Letter of support template and email it to our secretary, outlining why you support this proposed new facility for the team would greatly enhance our grant application. We’d appreciate if you could complete, sign and return any letter to the email address below, no later than 28th March 2024. Alternatively, please update any previous letter of support which you may have made with todays date.

Please return the letters of support to - [email protected]

THE DEADLINE FOR THE SURVEY AND ALL LETTERS OF SUPPORT IS 28th March 2024

Thank you for your help. We really appreciate it and we look forward to this exciting time ahead when we can finally have a permanent base we can call home.

12/02/2024

25/01/2024

Together NIMRA & IMRA are staging a provincial Ulster Championship for this season. This will be a 5 race series (with 3 races to qualify) spread across the province. All the races (except Carn…

11/12/2023

Can't let the day pass without a mention...

International Mountain Day is an occasion to create a large social movement that can bring mountain issues on the tables of politicians and society in general around the world.

16/06/2023

Our best wishes Harry . ☘️

On Monday 19th June 2023 Harry Teggarty , creator of Cassie's Challenge will take on a new personal challenge, one he has created and been working on for sometime. Based on Cassie's Challenge Harry's challenge is to run over 100 mountains using the Cassie's route as his baseline. He will, in the course of this challenge, be faced with 170km of running with 11500m of climbing thrown in, just for good measure.

LINK TO TRACKER: http://live.primaltracking.com/cassiesdouble23/

At Mourne Runners and Cassie's Challenge we wish Harry well and will be there to support him.

A rough schedule for Harry‘s Challenge Is as follows…

Start Annalong Harbour. 5 00am. Monday 19/6/2023

Leg 1 To Bloody Bridge. 8 30AM.
Leg 2 To Slievenamaddy. 11:30AM.
Leg 3 To Crossroads. 3:00PM
Leg 4 To Ott. 8:00PM
Leg 5 To Ben Crom Dam. 1:30AM.

Rest 3 hours 30 mins. 5 00 am Tuesday 20/6/2023

Leg 6 To Slievenamaddy 9:00AM.
Leg 7 To Bloody Bridge. 12:30PM
Leg 8 To Carrick Little. 4:30PM.
Leg 9 To Deer’s Meadow. 10:00PM.
Leg 10 To Weir. 2:00AM.
Leg 11 To S of Spelga. 4:00AM.

Rest. 3 hours 30 mins. 7 30am. Wednesday 21/6/2023

Leg 11 To Ott. 9:30AM.
Leg12 To Weir. 1:00PM.
Leg13 To Deer’s Meadow. 4:30PM.
Leg 14 To Annalong. 11:00PM.

The link to the tracker will follow shortly.

P.S. The formula for making your own caffeine enhanced beverage is included (in case you haven't asked Scott https://www.facebook.com/jonny.scott.5891 for any of his beans). You may need this to keep watching those dots.

03/05/2023

One of the great names from the golden age of fell running – Bobby Morton of Wigton – has died at the age of 81.

05/07/2022

Lazy summer days in the deck chair can be so much more fun when you know it's by choice and not because you aren't fit to do anything else. Knowing you can run 5K (or more if your fancy) can be a great feeling. Want to be that person?

Check out Run NI's list of summer programmes and join in the fun of running.

Run NI are delighted to announce the return of our Summer C25k programmes, which are a series of 8-week summer Couch to 5K programmes running in Ballymena, Belfast, Carrickfergus, Craigavon and Omagh under the expert guidance of our qualified Leaders and Coaches in Running & Fitness in conju