Mayo athlete competes in European Masters Mountain Running Championships

Mayo AC's David Dinsmore was part of the Irish Masters team at the European Masters Off Road Running Championships (EMORRC), which took place in the shadow of Mount Etna at Nicolesi in Sicily last weekend.

The championships took place in the Etna National Park - 'a splendid theatre for the mountain running and trail running events (south side of the volcano) and of the vertical run (north side, with the finish line at 2800m above sea level'.

The event courses were based at La Nuova Quercia and Rifugia Sapienza and three races took place at altitude - long distance 28k, vertical 3.6k and classic 9k, with slopes ranging from 10% to 40%.

The Irish masters won three gold and three bronze medals, finishing ninth place in the table. An amazing performance given they were up against teams with much better resources.

Winners were: Gold - Becky Quinn, Classic W50; Becky Quinn. Long W50; Matt Alexander, Vertical M70. Bronze - Gerard Maloney. Classic M65; Men’s M65 team (Gerard Maloney, Martin McDonald, Gerard Down); Women’s W50 Classic team (Becky Quinn, Karen Crean, Annemarie Kenny).

David finished in 26th place in the Classic M65.

He took part in the Long (28km) but dropped out at 22km and over 4 hours and 20 minutes of mostly uphill running -"hardest thing I’ve ever done!"

And, he added: “To round off a great weekend Mt Etna erupted on Monday morning!”