Ann-Marie puts ‘horrendous’ start to year behind her with a new Irish record

ANN-MARIE McGlynn put a horrible start to 2022 behind her on St Patrick’s Day by recording a new Irish record over 5K.

The Strabane woman was competing in the Streets of Portlaoise 5K last Thursday where she finished a superb second overall behind Olympian Aoife Cooke and ahead of Aoife Kilgannon, finishing in a time of 16 minutes dead to set a new women’s 40 Irish record over the distance.

While delighted to have achieved her goal of completing the race around the 16 minute mark and breaking the record by seven seconds in the process, McGlynn was more pleased that she was able to prove her own fitness after suffering a hamstring tear and a bout of Covid since the new year.

“I had a nice Christmas, but on New Year’s Day I had a slight tear on my hamstring, so I had to cross-train and I wasn’t able to run for four or five weeks and then in the middle of that I took Covid, so I had a bad start to 2022,” she explained.

“My start to 2022 was absolutely horrendous. I couldn’t wait to see the end of ‘21 with the Olympics and everything that happened, but when 2022 started the way it did I just thought ‘this can’t be happening!’.

“But I put the head down and crosstrained and I reaped the rewards on Thursday because I held my fitness to a certain extent and Covid didn’t take as much out of me as I thought it would.”

Because of those issues earlier this year, McGlynn planned to use the race as a marker for her fitness at present and with the likes of Cooke and Kilgannon also running it provided her with the perfect test.

“It gave me a good blow out to see where I was at and I knew a couple of the good girls were going there so that’s why I went down there,” she added.

“You want to race the top girls in Ireland so you have to go to those races and I went down there and it worked out how I thought it worked out.

“I was hoping to just dip under 16 or be on it and I was on it dead. You hope you can race where you think you’re at in training. That’s where we thought I was at, so I can’t complain given the start I’ve had to ‘22.”

Ann-Marie will now turn her attention to training for two big races – a track event in Belfast and the 10K in Highgate on May 14th – this Spring before switching her focus to the marathon season when she has to decide whether or not to run the 26.2 miles event at the Commonwealth Games or the European Championships.

However, should she hit the Commonwealth Games 10K qualifying time in London in May, that could provide her with the opportunity to run in both.

“I’ll run the marathon at either the Commonwealth’s or the European’s but because they are only 10 days apart I have to pick by the end of May,” she explained.

“I’m going to go and do this 10K in London to see what I can do, see if I can get close to the Commonwealth Games standard, which would be nice and that would make my decision for me.

“But I have another seven weeks of hard graft before that 10K, that’s the big one and then we’ll move onto the marathon.”