Week ending Saturday 1st August
National Honours for Aisling and Jack
The elite of Irish athletics, including a small squad of eight athletes from Mullingar Harriers, gathered in a blustery Santry last weekend for the National Senior T&F Championships.
Aisling Lane lined up for the 5,000m race walk on Saturday as a serious medal prospect and gave her all and matched the current nine times National Champion stride for stride lap after lap as the large field shrank back bit by bit. By 3,000m the field was down to a tightly packed quartet, with Aisling the dominant athlete on the shoulder of the defending Champion. A lap out from the 4,000m mark disaster struck for Aisling as a sudden bad stitch threw her off her stride and she dropped back to fourth place with the other three pulling away from her. For most athletes that would be the end of their challenge but not Aisling and after two slower laps she got her form back and gave chase. She attacked with all of her might and showed fantastic turn of speed as she pulled back a deficit of over 50m to sail pass the stunned third and then second place athletes, and closing hard and fast, she almost caught the winner on the line as they all collapsed to the ground with exhaustion. A silver medal for Mullingar and huge accolades given to Aisling for her magnificent never say die attitude and determination.
Earlier in the day, Matthew Glennon had a fabulous opportunity to also take some National honours in the 10,000m race walk but he made the fatal mistake of going head to head from the gun with a former Champion and Olympian who was in the excellent form. Against the very best, Matthew’s technique was soon torn apart and the judges quickly took action and he was disqualified before the half way mark. A bitter disappointment but always a risk in this very technical event.
Cormac Dalton dropped down to the 1,500m and with only the first three in each of the four heats to qualify for Sunday’s final, it came down to a burn up in the last lap and among the three leading the charge was Cormac, who ran in third with a well-judged controlled effort to book his place in the final. Jamie Wallace put in a spirited effort in his heat and despite leading in the early laps, was run out of the top three places over the final lap.
We ended Saturday with an excellent performance by Patrick Leydon in the 400m. With five heats, only the winner and the three fastest non-automatic qualifiers would qualify for Sunday’s final, so making the final was always going to be extremely tough. Undaunted, Patrick put in a spirited performance in his heat, finishing strongly in third, unfortunately outside the time needed to advance to the final, but he was very happy to record a new personal best time of 48.54 seconds.
On Sunday afternoon, Donagh Carey contested the u/20 men 3,000m where he put in a good effort but finished out of the medal places. There was three races in the men 5,000m and running in the A race was Jack O’Leary and Jack Moran. After a cautious opening two laps, Jack O’Leary surged to the front and quickly opened a sizeable gap on the field over the next few laps. Sensing the danger that Jack would continue to pull further ahead, Darragh McElhinney (Bantry AC) finally began to give chase. It took him nearly three laps to close down on Jack, leaving the rest of the field split wide open. The leading two ran together until four laps to go when Darragh made his long run for home, with Jack in tow. Unfortunately for Jack, he was unable to keep with Darragh who ran on to victory, but Jack kept pushing hard behind him and was delighted to finish in second place and win National silver, admitting after the race that he knew he really just needed to give it a go and see what happened. Meanwhile, Jack Moran continued to race hard with the pack and was rewarded with an excellent sixth place finish in a time in or around his personal best.
Between the women and men 1,500m finals late on Sunday evening, there was a very special event organised by Athletics Ireland. Every club in Ireland had been invited to nominate two juvenile athletes to represent their club in a special on-track celebration of Ciara Mageean’s remarkable achievements as European Champion, Olympian and Irish record holder, while inspiring the next generation of athletes. We invited the parents of every juvenile member in Mullingar Harriers to let us know if their child was interested and we held a draw last week to select one girl and one boy. Sophie Whitelaw and Shay Gavigan were drawn to represent Mullingar Harriers and together with over 400 juvenile athletes from other clubs, Sophie and Shay proudly wore their Mullingar Harriers colours in a 150m race with Ciara. Well done Sophie and Shay for being such excellent ambassadors for the club.
After that excitement, we finished the evening with the men’s 1,500m final where Cormac Dalton, who is better known as a 5,000m and 10,000m specialist, put a good effort against the very best metric milers in Ireland, finishing strongly to round off a very good week-end of action for Mullingar Harriers [ML/GD].
5k prize for Siomha Leonard
The second running of the Anne-Marie Comey 5km took place last Friday evening in Summerhill, Co. Meath. All proceeds went to the Irish Cancer Society, so the event drew a fantastic entry of over 630, including Mullingar Harrier Siomha Leonard who finished in a swift 20:30, a brilliant twenty eighth place overall and third woman, to win a very well-deserved prize for her efforts [GD].
New long jump pit
Thanks to the great work by Sean Liston, Declan Costello, Matt Molloy and Matthew Molloy, a second long jump pit has been built at the far end of the sprint lanes. We continue to work to improve facilities at the club, including the recent discus circle and cage, and this new long jump will be a great addition to facilities at the club grounds and will give more members the chance to try the long jump in training.
Check the Club’s website at www.mullingarharriers.com or its Facebook page for all the latest news.
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