After the winter break and a quite January on the
competitive front, the action started to pick up in February. At the very end
of January David Kenny won the 3K event in the AAI games. He won the 3K walk
beating fellow Olympian Brendan Boyce and moving into 3rd in the
all-time Irish list. On the 12th
February in Nenagh at the Munster Indoor Championships he set a new Irish
Record in the 5K walk knocking a massive 8 seconds the existing record
finishing in 18 minutes 42 seconds.
That was the fastest time in the world at the time and was a
tremendous return to form for David who has had injury problems that curtailed
his performance somewhat last summer
Tiernan Lynch, Isaac Vickers, Conor McCarthy and Kevin
O’Shea all won medals at the Kerry Schools cross country championships at the
end of January. All 4 of them also qualified for the Munster Cross country
championships to be held in Waterford at the end of the month from the regional
championships that were held in Pallaskenry and Waterford. Tiernan was also
very impressive in coming second in the Kerins O’Rahilly’s 5K road race. Dermot
Dineen also showed up well in the 10K event held on the same day. Tiernan’s
younger sister Jessie who is slowly coming back from injury also competed in
the schools cross country races.
In the weekly parkruns the club is well represented. Cian
and Matthew Hogan finished well up the field in the Tralee run. In the
Killarney run Brendan Lynch finished second with Pirette Scroope and Michael O
Connor both finishing well under 25 minutes.
The National master athletics championships were held in
Athlone on the 5th of February. The clubs lone representative
Michael O Connor was a comfortable winner in the 3K walking event.
The National indoor championships were held in Dublin. David
was our sole competitor in the 5 K event. He finished a comfortable winner
in 19 min 11 sec. in the 5K walk
In the Munster Indoor championships we were represented with
6 athletes performing Fionn Hogan ran in the 60m and 600 finishing a very respectable 5th
and 8th in both heats. Roisin Daly won her heat in the 60m
comfortably. In a very fast final she came home in 6th place.
Shortly afterwards she ran in the 200m qualifying for the semi-final but
unfortunately didn’t progress to the final. It was still a 2 brilliant
performances from her.
Ryan Vickers continued his winning ways from last year finishing
2nd in the 60 metres and showing great versatility also finished 2nd
in the 800.
Elder brother Isaac also finished on the podium finishing 2nd
in the 800m in an impressive time of 2 minutes 13 seconds. Nearly as impressive
was the performance of Samuel Scroope and Conor McCarthy who in their first
indoor championships both ran just over 2 minutes 20 in the same race. Well
done to all who competed. Credit also go to their coach Jerome Foley for all
his work with the athletes