This 5 mile road race is on private army land to the north of Kilworth in NE Cork. It is just off the old Cork to Dublin road and is very easy to access from the M8 motorway.
Coming from Cork City on the M8 (toll road)...take exit 14 and follow the signpost for Kilworth on what it now the re-designated R639 road. Once you get to the turn off for Kilworth, stay on the main road instead and continue up the hill past Corbett Court.
Coming from the north on the M8, take exit 13 and follow the directions for the army camp.
The Glocca Maura Inn is located at the highest point of the road. The race HQ is normally either the Glocca Maura Inn itself or Ned Roches Pub which is located on the road to Glanworth.
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| View from the south of the Glocca Maura Inn |
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| Ned Roches Pub...400m to the south-west of the Glocca Maura Inn |
Course description...Essentially, the course is roughly in the shape of a triangle and consists of 2 loops. See map below. The roads are like narrow country roads and there will be little or no traffic.
You start at the north-east corner and you run in an anti-clockwise direction.
The photo below shows the start and finish area. As you can see, you start on a slight uphill and you also have to run slightly uphill to reach this spot.
The initial uphill section to the highest point of the course is quite short....~250 metres. After this, the road drops down to the next junction at about 0.5 miles where you turn left...
The road rises slightly for about 200m but then falls away gradually on a very long straight section. Along here, you go though the one mile mark...a reasonably fast opening mile.
At 1.4 miles, you turn reach the most southerly point of the course and you turn left and left again...
Not long after the turn at 1.6 miles, you are at the lowest point of the course. This is about 30 metres or 100 feet lower the highest point.
From here, you begin the gradual climb uphill till you complete the full loop at 2.5 miles. Repeat the loop again and it's 5 miles.
As you can see from the profile below, the course has essentially two long gradual downhill and uphill sections.
Overall.......it's a reasonable course with no steep hills. The roads are very quiet and ideal for a road race. There are some really nice views from the top out to the west over the Blackwater valley with the Ballyhoura Mountains and the Galtee Mountains to the North.........but perhaps you should leave that for the warm down ;o)
