Athletics: County Novice road title is on the line this Sunday in Moyne

The County Novice Road Championship takes place in Moyne next Sunday.

So next Sunday’s race over 3k for women and 6k for men will be very interesting as athletes try to gauge their fitness levels after such a lengthy time without races.

At a recent County Board meeting there was a great degree of interest from all the Clubs and hopefully this will see two well attended races. Indeed, this year’ event will see the new club in the county, Dualla Boherlahan Ballytarsna (DBB AC) taking part.

We in Tipperary AAI will be ensuring that everything we are doing will comply with the up-dated regulations from National AAI in terms of Covid-19. For our first road championship, hosted by Moyne AC, we will have in place guidelines which will be the same for all other road championship races unless we see positive ways of making it safer.

The relevant guidelines for our Road Championships as follows:

Everyone will have the covid deceleration form filled in before coming to any race. This is for officials as well as the athletes.

Anyone who answers no to any of the questions should not turn up.

Every athlete will come ready to compete.

Every athlete will have their own sanitizer, drink and food in their own holdall or bag and not share with anyone else.

Every athlete will socially distance by 2m from everyone else or wear a buff / neck scarf. Face mask or shield are not acceptable.

Numbers will be collected at the finish line by one member of each club, who will distribute the correct number to each runner in their club. The race secretary will not open any envelope or accept a return of any number.

All athletes will come to the start line in time for their race and will socially distance or wear a buff / neck scarf, which can be pulled down just before off.

At the start, all athletes must social distance away from the start line. The starter will whistle up the start within 30sec and blow the whistle on the start time. Anyone late for their race can go to the start line and join in after.

As the race finishes, and all athletes go through the finish line, each athlete must leave as soon as possible. There will be no socialising.

The first 3 athletes across the line will receive their individual medals near the finish line. To do this, the athletes will stand 2m apart and wear their buff / neck scarf again.

For the County Novice, the ladies will start at 11:30am and the men at 12:30pm. The women should be gone home before the men’s race starts.

The cups and team medals for the County Novice will be presented at the County Novice “B” in Templemore. Each Championship race will have their team medals and cups presented at the race after. By complying with the guidelines as well using common sense, we will have other road races and competition to take us into the cross-country season. We would like to wish every an enjoyable Road Championship.