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St. Michael’s Rowing Club annual Urban Run returns to be a zero waste run

 SMRC 6th urban run is returning on its way!

St. Michael’s Rowing Club annual Urban Run returns to be a zero waste run

The St. Michael’s Rowing Club annual Urban Run is back now! The SMRC 6th urban run takes place on Sunday, October 7 at 1 pm this year. The SMRC 6th urban run is organised for the benefit of St.Michael’s Rowing Club’s Youth Rowing Programme. It is the SMRC 6th Urban Run, sponsored by Sherry Fitzgerald. The event will again deliver a flat, fast and scenic course so participants can achieve their goals. 

The 10k event is ideal as a final fast run in the taper for DCM, for an attempt at a PB, or just to measure the progress in 2018, whilst the 5k is growing into a big family event with up to 300 runners taking part in 2016 & 2017.


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The SMRC Urban Run will be Limerick’s first zero waste 10k! and marks the launch of ReUse Month, which will have events taking place over the next few weeks to promote re-using, re-purposing, or upcycling.

Mayor of the City and County of Limerick, Cllr James Collins said: “This is a fantastic initiative and it combines two important aspects of our lives – keeping fit and helping to keep the environment clean. I want to applaud St Michael’s Rowing Club for doing something about the amount of rubbish left following last year’s run and help make a difference for our city and our environment.”

“I would encourage other clubs and groups to get on board and do the same.”

The decision to have a zero waste race follows last year’s very successful run after which SMRC members had vivid memories of the many plastic bottles they had to pick up throughout the course.

Brian Richardson, St Michael’s Rowing Club Captain said: “St. Michael’s Rowing Club is conscious of respecting and celebrating the fabulous resource that is the Shannon River. This is just one way that we have decided we can help by reducing the amount of disposable plastic bottles required in our urban run – reducing the need to plastic bottles of water and reducing the amount of litter they need to collect after the run. It’s a win-win situation for all, our environment, St. Michael’s Rowing Club and Limerick.”

Many of the bottles only had a couple of sips taken out of them. Club Captain Brian Richardson felt the need to do something and contacted Limerick City and County Council’s Environment Awareness Officer for guidance and assistance.

Both have been working in partnership to ensure this year’s event eliminates/ significantly reduces plastic bottle waste.

Sinead McDonnell, Environment Awareness Officer with Limerick City and County Council said: “We are delighted to support St Michael’s Rowing Club with this fantastic reuse initiative. It is wonderful to see a club taking on an environmental issue and coming up with solutions and being prepared to trial them. The #RunReuseRefill glasses will be available for other similar initiatives across the city and county.”

“A case study on the event is planned with the aim of seeing what has worked and what hasn’t and how to improve the initiative in the future. It will also be used to inform the environmental policy within the council for similar scale runs in the future.”

Winner of the 5k run last year in a very impressive time of 16:42 was Dooneen AC’s, Kevin O’Grady. Kevin was aged just 16 and shows huge potential. Equally impressive was the first female in the 5k, even younger than Kevin and fellow Dooneen athlete Ms Sarah Butler. Sarah was not yet 13 years old and finished in 20:30.

Sherry Fitzgerald has again come on board as the prime sponsor for the  SMRC 6th urban run and they looked forward to supporting this St.Michael’s Rowing Club led community event, which validates Limerick’s reputation as Ireland’s sporting city.

The event’s Charity partners are City Suicide Prevention Patrol, who do so much to prevent suicide by patrolling in the city and making interventions when necessary. The event is also run in conjunction with GROW Ireland Limerick Mental Health Association.

For more information on the SMRC 6th urban run, go here

For more stories on SMRC annual run, go here

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.