Last Friday evening around teatime, the news of Pat Hooper’s sudden and shocking death began filtering through.

For many, the rest of the evening was spent on the phone as they attempted to come to terms with the stunning loss not only of a giant of Irish athletics but of a personal friend.

At the death of his death, Pat Hooper was the chairman of the Dublin Athletics Board, which looks after some 42 clubs and around 9,000 athletes of all ages.

In January, he had answered the call when asked to stand as chairman of Athletics Leinster. Since 2016, he had been a member of the Athletics Ireland competitions committee. At Raheny Shamrock, he was the current treasurer, having fulfilled many other roles down the years.

Pat was the ultimate volunteer – he gave of his time unstintingly because of his huge love for athletics and because, as one of life’s natural leaders, he was happy to help out when he could.

He had competed internationally for Ireland but there’s little doubt that his legacy will live in the years of invaluable service he gave to Irish athletics as an administrator, a coach and an official. No job was too small for Pat if it served athletics.

We were lucky to have him.

A life lived for sport

Patrick Hooper was born on 12 July 1952 and bought from hospital to the family home in Raheny, on the north side of Dublin. He was one of six children. For the rest of life, he never moved far from the place he was born and bred.

He faced tragedy at a young age when his father, also called Patrick, died aged just 44 of a massive heart attack on 29 January 1963. Pat junior was ten and his younger brother Dick six. Their mother Maura was left to cope with a young family.

After his education at St Paul’s College, Pat began work in the insurance industry employed by the Irish firm PMPA which began as a motor insurer but soon grew into the largest insurance company in the country before spectacularly collapsing. At that point in the 1980s, it was bought over first by Guardian Royal Exchange and later again by AXA for whom Pat worked until his retirement.

By the early 1970s, Pat had begun training with the local athletics club Raheny Shamrock and was soon followed by his younger brother.

Marathon running was creeping into the public consciousness at the time and Pat’s hero was the Czech marathon runner Emil Zatopek, winner of three gold medals at the 1952 Olympics, whose philosophy was that “with persistent hard effort, you can change your body”.

The Czech’s brutal 40×400 efforts – a new style of training called “intervals” – and huge weekly mileage of a hundred miles and more, sometimes wearing heavy army boots, had become become the stuff of legend.

Getting the miles in on the run-commute

Pat, who had realised early on that he was not speed merchant material, began running to and from his home in Raheny to the PMPA office off at Wolfe Tone Street on Tuesday and Thursdays in an effort to increase his weekly mileage.

His mother thought he was mad and she wasn’t the only one; road running was a minority sport back then and he got the occasional offer of a lift from concerned drivers. On those same days, when in full training, he would run a 13-mile times circuit over the Hill of Howth in the evenings.

On Saturdays and Sundays ,he would set off on 24 and 30 mile long runs with the late Jim McNamara of Donore Harriers.

In 1975, came the first fruits of his hard work when Pat won the Dublin County Marathon in 2:25.54. Then in 1978, he finished second in the National Marathon, held in Tullamore, in a time of 2:19.53.

Winner that day was his younger brother Dick in 2:16.27, with both men wearing their lucky green and white candy-stripe Dolphin shorts and both selected for the European Championships in Prague where Pat finished 27^th in 2:20.29. It was a golden era for Irish athletics, with John Treacy winning his second World Cross-Country title in Limerick in 1979 and Eamonn Coghlan taking silver outdoors and gold indoors over 1500m at European level in 1978 and 1979.

1979, the golden year

In 1979, Pat was to hit the pinnacle of his career. In the spring, he won the second ever Ballycotton “10” in 49 mins 12 secs – a new course record. At the Dublin 10-Mile Championships, he recorded a solid victory over Gerry Kiernan of Clonliffe Harriers, while in Lanesboro, Co Roscommon, he won the National 15-Mile title in 75 mins 14 secs.

Best of all, on a scorching hot July day, again in Tullamore, he won the National Marathon title in a personal best 2 hrs 17mins 46 secs. The race included an international challenge and Scotland’s David Clarke was second in 2:18.01.

That year of 1979 also saw Pat attend a meeting of running enthusiasts interested in providing inter-firm competition for road runners of all standards. At a tense period in Irish history, Pat pragmatically proposed that the word “Irish” be avoided in the title of the new organisation.

So was born the Business Houses Athletics Association, with both Pat and Dick staunch supporters of its races over the next decade.

A main rival close to home

Back in Tullamore for a third time in May 1980, the brothers again battled it out at the National Marathon with the race a trial for the Moscow Olympics later that year.

On another broiling hot day, the plan was to share the lead until the opposition was burnt off after which it was each man for himself. Dick took the win in 2:16.27, while Pat was a brave second in 2:19.23 despite an incident at the 14^th mile when a well-meaning official, attempting to cool him down, hit him full on with a bucket of water.

No permanent harm was done and on 1 August, both men lined out in the marathon at the Moscow Olympics, where Dick finished 38^th in 2:23.53 and Pat 42^nd in 2:30.28.

The first Dublin Marathon

On Monday 27 October 1980 came a pivotal moment in Irish athletics history when the first Dublin Marathon was held. The race course took in Raheny and Pat as a steward watched as his brother Dick made a small piece of running history by winning the race. A year later, Pat finished fourth in the second Dublin Marathon in 2:20.01; Dick didn’t run.

By the middle of the decade, with injuries and the heavy mileage of his younger days taking their toll, Pat was already moving off stage to concentrate on the administrative side of the sport and was also coaching local youngsters in the fine art of road running.

With a head full of ideas, he was persuaded to join the Raheny Shamrock committee, where he discovered to his dismay that the club was in serious financial difficulty. To bring in much needed cash, he proposed organising an annual road race. And so was born the Raheny 5-Mile, with the first race held in January 1985. Now firmly established as a must-do road race on the Irish circuit, the race celebrated its 36^th anniversary last January.

Pat the official at Dublin Masters XC Photo: Lindie Naughton

Excelling on the other side of racing

It would become one of hundreds if not thousands of local races that Pat would organise, often using St Anne’s Park, where the club trained, or a one-mile circuit around All Saint’s Road which was relatively car-free.

In 2001, Pat proposed holding the National Road Relays on the circuit, with victory for Raheny’s senior men making it a glorious day for the club. To this day, Raheny is the “home” for this popular club event, attracting teams from clubs all over the country every April.

Other Pat Hooper innovations have included regular local road leagues, most notably the Lord Mayor of Raheny summer series and, more recently, the Battle of Clontarf 10-Mile on Easter Monday, based in St Anne’s Park.

As chairman of the Dublin Athletics Board for over a decade, Pat brought the Dublin Masters Cross-Country Championships to St Anne’s Park. Held in early January, this is now second only to the National Championships in terms of the numbers it attracts.

Club pride for a national victory

As a club mentor and coach, Pat’s proudest day probably came in 2016, when Raheny Shamrock’s team of Mick Clohisey, Kevin Dooney, Conor Dooney and Mark Kirwan took the senior men’s title for the first time at the National Cross-Country. They would repeat that feat in the next two years, but it’s the first one that’s magic.

There’s more. No schools event or track meet in Dublin or Tullamore was complete without the avuncular presence of Pat on the finish line.

On some days, he would be standing with his stop watch at the North Leinster Schools Championships and a few hours later, standing with the same stop watch at a Dublin Graded League meet. For many of us, a visit to Santry wasn’t complete without a brief catch-up chat with Pat behind the timekeeper’s “steps”.

For travelling to road races in places like the Phoenix Park, Pat took to his bike as a means of keeping fit, especially after a knee replacement operation, often carrying a sheaf of road race flyers to hand out at the end of the finish chute.

And now he’s gone.

No man or woman is irreplaceable, but Pat Hooper – or “The Jugger” as he was to Raheny members – almost fits that description. He leaves a huge gap. Some sad days lie ahead, particularly at the Dublin Masters, the Raheny 5 and the National Road Relays, but we can rest assured that the spirit of this thorough gentleman will continue to permeate the sport he loved.

The post A big loss for Irish sport appeared first on Fast Running.

The Kenyans are known as the best endurance runners in the world. Some say it’s the Ugali, others say it’s the simple lifestyle. They have longer and slimmer lower limbs which are more efficient at respiration when training. There is definitely such a thing as a Kenyan calf muscle, I saw one with my own eyes.

I spent two weeks in Iten, the Home of Champions, at the Lornah Kiplagat High Altitude Training Centre this August in the hope of discovering some of the magic.

Run hard, eat hard, rest hard

Willy Songok, our guide would say everyday that we need to run hard, eat hard and rest hard. That is a motto I could get behind and definitely plays a role in their success.

Running is a part of all our lives to varying degrees. For many in Kenya, running is life, but not in the way you might understand if I expressed that sentence to you right after running a personal best or winning a medal. For two weeks I ran hard, ate hard and slept hard, but I also learned hard.

Iten is one of four training centres in the Rift Valley region. Eliud Kipchoge and the NN Running Team train across the valley in Kaptagat. There are 1,200 athletes in Iten, around 8000 in Kenya. Only the smallest portion of those who train here full time will actually make a living out of it.

When faced with this fact, it made me view the athletes that I saw everyday and their motivations in a different light. Our group was in pursuit of further knowledge and a good running environment. Curiosity and a desire to visit Africa brought me there. But the Kenyans runs to provide for their families and as a way to find a better life.

There are no recreational runners in the village, the people are either full time athletes, or working physical jobs such as farming.

I would run 500 miles…

An interesting feature of athletics here is that most Kenyans don’t really know exactly how many miles they do. Fancy watches cost money that could be spent on food. Runs are minutes based, and really dictated by the three effort levels: easy, moderate and hard.

If you weren’t supposed to be doing a hard run, then it should be easy, and at altitude, the pace ranges that you would consider easy are completely different. They tend to do less miles than at sea level and focus on higher quality workouts rather than hitting mileage targets.

We visited the home of a local athlete; Simon. He came here with his large family to pursue a running career.

He has yet to “make it”, meaning to get a sponsorship deal and a manager to organise his race schedule. So in the meantime he lives with his mother and numerous younger siblings in an unoccupied hut they found on the side of the road when they arrived.

Last year Simon won a half marathon with a promised prize of 300,000 Kenyan shillings – about 26,000 USD. This money would transform their lives. They could build a house that does not have a dirt floor, a house with more than two small rooms and running water. A house with a bed so Simon does not have to sleep on the hard floor.

But the race organisers have not paid him. This is not big news. In Kenya, unfortunately, it is very common for corruption to interfere with an athlete’s winnings.

A jumper with some serious miles too

Simon was wearing a Raheny Shamrock jumper which came to him via an American. We were not too sure the path it took to end up here but it brought home how lucky I am to be coming down in gear with multiple types of running shoes, and to have the luxury of being able to leave some tops behind me for the people we ran with.

The original owner of that very old edition of a Raheny Shamrock jumper has probably had many versions of gear during their time in the club, (whoever they are), yet here was a guy who was 1) delighted when I told him that was my own club and that we had a connection, 2) just happy to have a jumper, and 3) welcomed us to his home and allowed us to walk around.

Newspaper clippings of his success on the roads plastered the wooden walls of the dwelling. It made me sick to realise that the prize money he had been denied would be life changing and allow his family to live in, at a minimum, a house with a real floor, proper walls and beds.

The cost of renting a room in Iten for an athlete was about 3000 KES a month, about 26 Euro. I could go to the stall and buy a few bananas and ginger biscuits to last me a day or two for under 1 Euro. I drop cash at home like there is no tomorrow on coffee, lunch, a new top that I liked, an extra pair of leggings that match my runners better. I have never felt so wealthy in my life.

Racing childhood

I mentioned Willy Songok above, who over dinner one night just started to tell us about his childhood. In a race as a child, he ran to beat his friends. That felt good.

Then, he ran so he could get a ride in a car and watch the trees fly by faster than he had ever seen before. That was a great story to tell his friends, and a fun collateral benefit to being driven to other towns to race for his school team. His first prize winnings for another race was a soda and a piece of bread.

These were luxuries they would only have eaten at Christmas, if you came from a lucky family, that is. He told his friends how the soda tasted, how it fizzed in his mouth and tasted so sweet. He recounted a tale from when he was minding his parents cattle one day.

The 1977 East African Safari Rally was taking place near their location and when they would see the characteristic red dust blowing in the air in one direction, they took that as their cue to run hard in the other direction to catch a glimpse of the cars passing. It was about a 3km round trip.

Kenyan kilometres

Now, we learned that when Songok told us the run was 2km to the track, to take the distance estimation with a large pinch of salt.

We would always clarify if he was talking in metric kilometres or Kenyan kilometres to know what scale we were on! But the lesson from that anecdote is that Kenyan children grew up running, walking, moving everywhere. I asked were his parents runners to which he replied, “my parents, they only ran after cows!”.

Kids run or walk about 3km to school, back home for lunch, and repeat the round trip in the afternoon. That’s a 12km day for a child.

Our own days there were filled with morning runs, followed by a food and a lovely nap, to then head out in the mid-morning to tour someplace by foot for another few hours. Movement is standard. Running is life in Kenya.

Not in the way it is in Ireland for most of us, something we work around our jobs or college, something to be proud of and get the best out of yourself, a social activity, an exercise in solidarity in the case of the Sanctuary Runners, a way to keep the doctor away. In Kenya, running is a way out of poverty.

It is literally a lifeline, and for some, the only option.

Bláithín is a middle distance and cross country athlete who has been known to accidentally run into trees. She is in total denial about having to work for a living – you can follow her attempts at run-commuting to work on Strava.

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The post Run for your Life: the Kenyan way appeared first on Fast Running.

The Raheny Shamrock men’s team and UCD’s women aim to retain their Irish National Road Relay Championships on Sunday (April 22).

Going for three in a row, Raheny Shamrock will start as pre-race favourites in the men’s 8-mile race, but they will have to be on form to defend from Kilkenny City Harriers, DSD and Donore Harriers.

The strong Shamrock quartet Kieran Kelly, Eoin Strutt, Mick Clohisey and Conor Dooney will run the 2-mile, 1-mile, 3-mile and 2-mile legs, with the longer third handover probably the most crucial one.

Brian Maher, who won the national 10k title last week at the Great Ireland Run in Phoneix Park, will head the Kilkenny men will be looking to move further up podium after taking bronze last year.

The 40-year-old will have to be on form for the 3-mile leg which can make or break title aspirations and among his challengers will be Dundrum South Dublin’s Hiko Haso Tonosa.

DSD could be a big threat with Joe Sweeney also on their entry sheet.

Donore, who finished second last year, have Daragh Fitzgibbon, who won the university 5000m title last week, along with Eric Keogh and John Travers in the squad and should not be discounted.

City of Derry, fourth in 2017, where the highest placed team from Northern Ireland, but are not on the entry list this year.

North Down could well lead the charge from the North and have Irish international Craig McMeechan among their ranks once again and will want to improve on their 19th place last year.

UCD aim for consecutive titles

UCD will be the favourites over the 4-mile women’s relay (1-2-1 order) with Alanna Lally, Ellie Hartnett and Claire Mooney in their ranks.

Lally and Mooney are 800m specialists but should fare well over the mile distance – Lally ran well on her debut last year.

Letterkenny and Leevale were on the podium last year but don’t appear on the entry list. There still remains big name clubs in Crusaders and DSD with big-name runners such as Maria McCambridge (DSD), Linda Byrne (DSD), Orla Drumm (Crusaders) and Caroline Crowley (Crusaders).

North Down were fourth last year and will be looking to break into the medals key runners Jessica Craig and Rachel Gibson named on their team.

There will be big numbers in the masters’ races, O35 and O50, and Raheny will be strong in the women’s and men’s races with the likes of Ian Conroy, Damien Martin, Annette Kealy and Adrienne Atkins being instrumental.

All of the races are over the 4 mile, 1-2-1, distance with Crusaders W35 looking to defend while Raheny Shamrock have their record-breaking M35 team back with Ian Conroy, Michael McMahon and John Dunne.

St Finbarr’s AC make the trip to defend the M50 title with Michael Murphy, Cathal O’Connell and Ken Devine.

The post Raheny Shamrock and UCD bid to retain Irish road relay crowns appeared first on Fast Running.