October – Sports Personality

OCTOBER

ANN MARIE McGLYNN (ATHLETICS)

Ann Marie’s main target in 2020 and in 2021 is to achieve the qualifying time in the marathon to represent Ireland at the Tokyo Olympics this summer. She was in the middle of a marathon training block when the World Half Marathon Championships were taking place in Poland in October, so she felt that would prove ideal preparation for December’s Valencia Marathon. During the race in Poland, which turned out to be one of the fastest in history over 13.1 miles, Ann Marie finished 42nd overall, smashing the Northern Ireland women’s half marathon record in the process in a time of 71 minutes and 40 seconds. The 40-year-old mother of two is also the Northern Ireland women’s marathon record holder, which she set at the Dublin City Marathon in 2019.

Voting Opens Tuesday 2nd March

2020 Ulster Herald Sports Personality Awards in association with MFC Sports, LIVE winners reveal Wednesday 10th March, 7pm.

Ann Marie was featured in the Ulster Herald on Thursday, November 19, 2020 

Record breaking Ann-Marie is fully focused on realising Olympic dream

BY CHRIS CALDWELL

THERE aren’t too many athletes set a new national record on a training run and there are even fewer who then scoop an award for doing just that. But Ann-Marie McGlynn is no ordinary athlete and her ‘training run’ wasn’t your everyday, garden variety jog. She broke her own Northern Ireland women’s half marathon record at the World Half Marathon Championships in Poland where she finished in 42nd spot in a stunning time of 71 minutes and 40 seconds, which is why she has been named the Ulster Herald Sports Personality for October.

While it sounds a bit odd to refer to her competing in a World Championship race as a ‘training run’, for the Strabane woman it was just that as she sprints towards a much bigger picture that is coming more and more into focus lately.

The 40-year-old mother of two is hoping to earn a place in the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics next July but to do that she has to run under two hours 29 minutes and 30 seconds in Valencia early next month and her record breaking efforts in Poland were part of her preparations to do just that.

While she is in good form ahead of the Valencia Marathon on Sunday, December 6th, the pressure she is under ahead of that race is growing. That’s mainly down to the fact Ann- Marie knows what she needs to do to make it to the Olympic Games – she has to run faster than she has ever run before over 26.2 miles, which means she needs to shave almost three and a half minutes off her personal best of 2:22.54.

That’s not beyond the realms of possibility, though, as she took seven minutes off her PB when breaking the NI women’s record at the Dublin Marathon last year, which was only her second time over the distance.

“I need to go for the qualifying standard so I have no option but to go for a sub-2:29.30 because anything less won’t get me to Tokyo,” she said. “I don’t want to be going down to route of trying to get into the top 80 in the world because I think I was 86th when they froze it, so I’ll have to go for it.

“That’s just the way it is and we know it will come down to fine margins but we also know we really need to hit the nail on the head this time.

“My head is just in Valencia at the moment,” she stressed. “It’s coming quickly so we’re coming to the end of the training now before we start pulling it back a bit. “I’m just trying to keep my head straight for that, stay healthy – I just can’t even see beyond it at the minute.

“I love Christmas and I have the tree up but I can’t even think about that at the minute, I need to get Valencia done.”

Ann-Marie will be able to take plenty of positives from her record breaking run in Poland when she toes the line in Valencia in just over a fortnight.

In a world class field, she showed her class to keep pace with the top 30 runners until the final stages when the demanding course took its toll.

“[Poland] went how we thought, where we thought I would be time-wise,” she explained. “Obviously, I’d have liked to have been 10 or 15 seconds quicker but for the course, it was so technical, the drags were long and the downhills, so what I ran for the course, I’m happy. I know if it had been a flatter course, I would have been 71:20 or 71:30, which I would have been delighted with.”

During the race, McGlynn had to concentrate on managing her pace, which is something she feels she achieved well.

“I had to decide early on if I was going to stick with the group I settled in or if I was going to put the brakes on and slow down to go with the group behind me,” explained the mother of two.

“But I felt comfortable and I thought ‘you know what? I’m fit so I’ll just stay in here and we’ll see what happens’.

“I did die a wee bit on the third lap and then the fourth lap was hard. I had to chat to myself and make myself stay on the pace. I think I dropped pace on the 10th and 11th miles but then I a Belgian girl [Nina Lauwaert] came flying past me.

“I had to decide whether or not to let her go or tie on the back of her so I literally sat on the back of her and got pulled home the last mile. I think she beat me by seven seconds but it got me back on the Portuguese [Sara Moriera] and Italian [Valeria Straneo] girl who ran away from me in the mile before. “That paid off but that hurt. I really dug deep to stay with her but there were always people passing you.

 I went from 27th to 40th in that 5K but that’s because you were in a group of 10 people and there were 10 behind us, so once the group behind caught us, you went from 27th to 37th in the click of a finger.”