Foyle Valley’s Rankin in top form at double events

Some of the Ultimate Challenge's runners who took part in Sunday's Strabane Lifford 5k.

Indeed, there were some excellent displays at the May Bank Holiday Lifford Track meeting, the Festival of Miles at the Mary Peters Track, the Slieve Binnon Hill Climb, Ballyshannon 5K and last Saturday’s IMC meeting in Greystones, county Wicklow.

Jenny O’Brien improved her season’s best 400m Hurdles time to 66.26s at the Wicklow venue on Saturday with a fourth place finish.

This improved her 66.87s for third at the Lifford track meet on Bank Holiday Monday and augers well for the rest of the season for the City of Derry athlete.

Scott Rankin has been busy, the Foyle Valley star winning the Mens 3,000m race at Lifford on Monday with an impressive 8m 31.88s and then taking the runners-up spot in the Tuesday night’s Festival of Miles at the Mary Peters track with a 4m 23.93s effort behind Finn Valley’s Mark Hoy on 4, 19.03s.

Declan Reed clocked 8m 48.91s for third in the Lifford 3,000m and Noel Logan stepped down to take the Mile in 4m 42.61s as Mark McGarvey won the 110m Hurdles in 16.07s and also ran 11.27s for second in the 100m flat.

Lifford also saw a podium double for Emma McKay, a 17.84s 100m Hurdles runners-up spot and a 1m 50cm win in the High Jump while Ciara Armstrong won the 100m in 12.96s.

Derry City Track Club’s Aaron Carlyle ran 51.71s for third in the Men’s 400m at Lifford and Scott Graydon posted an early season 62.09s for second in the 400m Hurdles at the same meeting.

Meanwhile Allan Bogle won Wednesday night’s Slieve Binnon Hill climb, a two mile test with 2,000 feet of ascending. The Spartan moved ahead of the early leader around the half way mark and posted a winning time of 22m 23secs to comfortably see off Ian Bailey of Newcastle AC and William McKane of Mourne Runners.

Letterkenny’s in-form Ciaran Doherty ran sub 15 minutes to take the Ballyshannon 5K title in fine style on Friday night.

The classy Doherty posted 14m 56s for the win, comfortably clear of Finn Valley’s James Speight, 15m 27s and City of Derry’s Gary Slevin’s 15m 48s.

James Brown grabbed the M40 prize with a 16m 13s clocking in fifth, losing out in a photo finish with another Letterkenny runner, Paul McGlinchey who was credited with the same time.

The top three women were all Finn Valley runners, Teresa McGloin winning well with 16m 50s ahead of Helen Stockdale’s 18m 02s and Angela Speight on 18m 28s.

Meanwhile the latest Half Marathon on the block, the inaugural Strabane-Lifford race, saw facile wins for Omagh Harrier Stephen Duncan and Lifford AC’s Natasha Adams as they posted excellent times of 69m 49s and 78m 37s to comfortably take the honours in the cross border race on Sunday.

The race attracted a decent entry, there were 347 recorded finishers and close to 200 ran in the supporting 5K so the joint organisers Strabane District Council and Lifford AC must have been happy with their promotion.

Duncan, a serial Waterside Half Marathon winner in recent years was the class man in the field and proved it with his sub 70m winning time, he had almost seven minutes to spare at the finish over Foyle Valley’s Chris McGuinness who ran 76m 26s, ahead of Michael Murphy of City of Derry on 77m 50s.

The Derry club athletes could well have used the race as a long training run as both are capable of better but Duncan is the proven distance specialist and was always way out in front.

Natasha Adams is in excellent form currently and actually finished an astonishing 4th overall, her 78m 37s winning time a full 16 minutes plus better than the 95m 24s of the runner-up Gillian Cordener of Seapark AC with Grainne Kelly of Tyrone’s Knockmany Runners, third on 96m 20s.