Run every mountain

The views from the Black Mountain over Belfast are beyond compare, and surely up there with Europe's great visitors. Fortunately, when you run as slowly as I do you can get to take in this amazing spactacle which I surely did on this morning's tenth anniversary Black Mountain Run and Walk organised by Dougie Adams of Caulfield's and many other endeavours.

I'm told the troubled Northern Ireland Events Company was to have its budget subsumed by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board which, all things being equal, should lead to more money coming to events such as the West Belfast Féile rather than golf outings in Portrush for the well-heeled.

However, I'm also informed that the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure under new man Nelson McCausland has yet to sign off on the move which was to have come into effect on 1 October. Of course, any delay would be unrelated to the fact that this transfer of powers and budgets could, once and for all, end the funding limbo in which Europe's biggest community festival operates.

But it's time to go one further, Belfast should have an events budget which would get behind an event like the Black Mountain 10k — and, yes, the ascent is murderous for 49-year-old legs — and turn it into a tourism and civic pride bonanza with 1,000 entrants annually.

Now that enterprising Sinn Féin councillor Conor Maskey has managed to get Belfast City Council to support a motion to place a major piece of art in City Hall celebrating the Irish language, getting an events budget to fund community uplift events in underserved areas should be easy.

And how did I do in the mountain stakes, you ask. One hour and seven minutes to cover 4.8 miles which meant, bar the walking wounded, I was last home. But I ran every inch of it so that'll do me.

(Our picture by Ed McGinley shows Paul Blaney, centre, who won in 37 minutes, with organiser Dougie Adams and me. I came in exactly 30 minutes after Paul.)