Galbally Runners Club Notes 20th June 2021

Galbally 5 Event for the Eagles Special Olympic Club

Members of The Eagles Special Olympics Club

Every year Galbally Runners support a charity to raise money for good causes. This year the

running group has chosen an amazing local group called the Eagles Special Olympics Club. The Eagles Special Olympics Club was formed in 2011 and officially became a registered club in March 2012 and will be celebrating 10 years next year.

The club is for children and adults with a Learning difficulty and is open to all. The initial club began with just 6 members on the first night and has grown into a multi sports club consisting of some 35 Athletes and 15 plus Volunteers. All Volunteers and Coaches are registered, trained and vetted and a large amount have coaching qualification and more. All Coaches and Volunteers give of their time freely to this amazing group to support the athletes. The Athletes though, are of course, the back bone of the club and over the past ten years the club has competed at local, regional, national and international levels, winning Gold, Silver and Bronze medals at all disciplines. The Eagles Club have competed in Games in Antrim, Derry, Dublin, Limerick and most recently had two athletes at the Special Olympics World Summer Games in Dubai as part of Team Ireland.

Initially the Eagles group was an Athletics Club but they have expanded into the sports of Bocce and Football, enjoying success on both fronts. Based in Coalisland the club has Athletes from right across the region including Dungannon, Cookstown, Killeshill, Omagh, Carrickmore, Galbally, Caledon, Moy, Aughnacloy, Fermanagh and Armagh.

The Eagles Club also has a very active social calendar and enjoy events throughout the year from Santa Sundays to the Annual Road Trip and from Halloween Fancy Dress Ball to Summer Bar B Q. The events, like the competitions are well supported by our parents and family members and are very thankful to all our sponsors and those who organise fundraising events throughout the year. It is simple without these events then Eagles wouldn"t function.

So far the Eagles have produced numerous Ulster, a large number of All Ireland and even a World Champion at Special Olympic Games have no notion of stopping and as long as the guys and girls want us to continue the Eagles Club will be there. The covid pandemic has put paid to many sports over the past 15 months including Special Olympics but the Eagles Club continued to function via online Zoom training twice a week and added a weekly Zoom Zumba session as well while Athletes were staying at home.

The Eagles Club welcomes new athletes and Volunteers regularly and are slowly but surely getting back to functioning as a proper club as the restrictions ease.

Paul Murray 5K Grand Prix Series Week 3

Week 3 of the Paul Murray grand Prix series in Eskra seen another great week of running from the Galbally Runners squad. Fergal O’Donnell recorded a personal best of 17:16 and was in ninth position overall and second in his age category. O’Donnell is going from strength to strength this year and is now eyeing that sub 17 minute 5K. Maybe a Parkrun somewhere during the summer willdo it. Peter Cush, at just 18 years of age and just back from injury recording a super time of 18:30. Denise McCann knocked in another PB and her second sub 20 minute 5K in two weeks, this time taking over 10 seconds off her last 5K with an amazing time of 19:33. Brendan Woods ran a time of 19:42 and Niall McGinty chose to take this as a threshold run on his training program and ran a great

time of 23:46. We done to all the runners.

Upcoming Events

This Friday evening, 25 June 2021, our runners will head up again to Eskra for the final round of the Paul Murray 5K Grand Prix Series at 7:30PM. We wish all runners the best of luck and we hope to see some more time improvements and even the odd personal best achievement.

Couch to 5K Week 8

This is the last training week of the couch to 5K. The runners have been putting in an amazing effort over the last two months and once this week’s training is over we will have our 5K event to see these runners make this achievement is less than 10 weeks. Once this is over we hope to see the runners out with the rest of the group. They are all well able and an amazing bunch of runners who can add so much to the Galbally Runners Team.

Galbally 5 Mile and 5K Events

The Online Registration has now opened and is available from our website

http://www.galballyrunners.com Entries are going fast and may be limited with Covid restrictions so get signed up. We are now offering a £100 voucher for DAC running shop in Armagh For everyone who has registered online by Friday 26th June. It will, as always, be a smashing day. Proceeds for this event will go to the Eagles Special Olympic Club as mentioned above. Keep an eye out on our Facebook page and website for further details.

Training and Events

Club Training continues this Tuesday and Thursday evenings at Galbally Community Centre at 7PM with Tuesday nights session being on the track with running coach Brian Taggart and Thursday the option of Track and road. Couch to 5K training continues at the community centre at 7PM on Wednesday and Friday evenings. We encourage all new to running to come along. It’s free, it’s fun and it’s good for you. Sunday morning training will commence at 8am and will be distances to suit everyone.

If you would like to join us

please send a us a message to http://www.facebook.com/galballyrunners email denisemullan11@yahoo.co.uk or check us out at http://www.galballyrunners.com. We welcome all runners to join our club.