Choosing my sixth highlight from my production of manxathletics during 2014 was harder than the others because there are so many events I have not yet mentioned. The Track & Field Championships are one of the highlights on the calendar, and I can go back 40 years to when they were called he Manx Games, but I rarely get the chance to see them over a weekend in the summer when I am busy and, as I explained in my introduction, I feel a lack of purpose when I cant name the athletes in the photos as most are juniors. The Isle of Man Mountain Ultra (formerly the Manx Mountain Marathon) is another favourite as are two of the big road races over the Marathon and Half Marathon distances. And I love covering the End to End Walk and, certainly when the weather is good, all of the fell races. The junior fell running championships have been incredibly successful. Having taken part in the junior Island cross country championships more than 40 years ago with less than a handful in each age group, to a vast expansion of cross country in the 80s only for the fixture list to explode into an uncontrollable mess approaching 30 events a year (five different clubs held leagues and there was also a junior league) then I have to conclude that the current well structured Island Cross Country League has been one of my highlights for many years and must be included in my top 6 features for 2014, even though most of the coverage is on the iomaa.info site and not mine. When the Island League was reintroduced in the late 80s there were still 12 events (6 clubs x 2 events) but the current five a year is just about perfect and the organisation by the three clubs who host and the officials who co-ordinate is nearly always first class. Here is to lots of mud in 2015.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 18:37:13 +0000
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