UK Racewalking 20k Championships 2025 (2nd Mar)
The UK Racewalking 20k Championships were held early on Sunday morning 2nd March at the NSC Bowl on the Isle of Man, at the 800m course developed especially for racewalking. The event was a World Athletics Calendar event, so times and performance are acceptable as qualification standards for all elite Championships in 2025. The Senior Men and Senior Women 20k races commenced before the wind and rain that was forecast for the afternoon arrived, to give cool but ideal conditions for endurance racing.
As a World Calendar event, top international panel racewalking judges had been invited to ensure all International standards were met. Matthew Glennon had to pace and race within himself as the strictly judged event meant that he had to have a continuous focus on smooth rhythm and safe racewalking technique at all times. He achieved this with an excellent opening 10k of 44;40 and an all clear from the judges. With this reassurance, Matthew pushed on to complete the second 10k even faster (44:29), to give a final finishing time of 1:29:09, which is almost a minute inside the European Team Championship standard and just over 20 seconds inside the European u/23 T&F “B” qualification standards set by Athletics Ireland. Matthew was also delighted to be the second finisher overall, with only the British Champion just ahead of him.
Showing a level of maturity way above her years, young Aisling Lane set about her task with total control and measured pacing lap by lap. She reached 10k in 51:13 (her second fastest ever 10k) and then had to keep increasing her efforts to maintain her pace as the laps got tougher and tougher on weary legs. Her goal was qualification for the European Team Championships in May in the Czech Republic but at 15km with the realisation that a European u/23 qualification standard was also achievable, she dug even deeper and finished with a very fast last 5k in 25 minutes exactly to give her a fantastic 20k debut time of 1:41:51, inside the standards for the European Team Championships and the European u/23 T&F.
This was two qualifying standards achieved in the one day and now Matthew and Aisling can look forward to representing Ireland at the Senior elite level this Summer with close to three months training time until then, so that they build for even better performances [ML].
