Got this email from a friend who does the IMRA race up and down Carrauntoohil. It goes up the Lack Road, across to Curraghmore, on to Caher and then to Carrauntoohil. Oh and then back down again of course!

The Man of the Mountain by Jonathan Beverly
As featured in the September 2011 issue of Running Times Magazine

In 1988, the second year in the modern mountain running era that a race was run up the 1,039m peak, John Lenihan, a dairy farmer from the nearby hills , blew away the field and set a time of 71:43 for the round-trip to the cross atop and back, a time that has never been broken. Lenihan went on to win the race 14 times in a row and 19 times in all before retiring when the course was changed in 2010, only losing outright twice in that streak.

Lenihan wasn’t a newcomer to racing that first year in Carrauntoohil. “My first taste of mountain running was on Peel mountain in the isle of Mann in 1983 when I won the isle of Mann Easter athletics race to the summit and back,” he recalls. “I repeated this victory in 1985 and then came back to Ireland to win the Sligo warriors mountain race.” He remembers that race as significant because of the 1,000-pound prize purse and because he beat the then reigning world mountain champ Kenny Stewart. Lenihan went on to win the world mountain championship himself when it was held in Switzerland in 1991.

Lenihan recalls some of the more difficult years: “I broke my leg in October 1999 and was kept in hospital for a week, however two weeks later I resumed training each day doing laps of the field with my crutches. I got the cast off mid-December and I won the first race of the new millennium in Kerry on January 1st. I was very nervous facing the Carrauntoohil race in June 2000 as I hadn’t been past the accident site since it happened, as I approached the area on race day I had to focus with all my might to try and maintain my composure. That day it was a very mentally exhausting experience for me.”

On other difficult years, Lenihan recalls, “I was very sick one year with the flu but I can’t remember what year it was. I couldn’t make up my mind if I would compete or not and then I decided that I would go and see how I felt when I got there. I felt no better but decided I would start out in the race and see how I felt. After a mile or two warm-up, I remember standing under a hedge in the shade watching everyone warming up and I just wanting to go to bed. Many people tried to convince me that it was too dangerous to take part as I was feverish. Strangely enough, I managed to win that day but it was sheer torture and I think it took me weeks to recover. Linkback: https://mountainviews.ie/summit/1/comment/6475/