MSB St Patrick’s Festival 5K

Colm Sheahan (Leevale AC) and Deirdre Byrne (Slí Cualann AC) were both  winners at the MSB St Patrick’s Festival 5k yesterday.

Perfect running conditions greeted one of the few remaining road races on the Streets of Dublin where Leevale’s Colm Sheahan continued his fine form with a first place finish in 14:43.

The Leevale athlete is bearing the fruit from a five-week training spell in Kenya and also recently bagged the bronze medal over 3,000m at the GloHealth National Indoor Championships. East Cork’s Michael Harty was just a second adrift on 14:44 – also reaping benefit from altitude training in
the Rift Valley.

Rathafarnham’s Sean Hehir rounded out the top three with 15:05 as he sharpens up his prepartions for the World Half Marathon Championships in Cardiff this weekend.

Deirdre Byrne continued her rise to the top of domestic women’s distance running and she impressed with a winning time of 16:09. The secondary school teacher has been gradually getting fitter and a return to the international fold is within touching distance if she can maintain her momentum.

Catherina McKiernan (Annalee AC) graced the roads of Dublin City and showed her consistency with 16:50 and a second place finish. The distance running icon continues to show most of her younger rivals a clean set of heels. Eight hundred metres specialist Fiona Kehoe (Kilmore AC) will have been happy with her third place finish in 17:16.

Irish Times’ columnist Frank McNally (Donore Harriers), who recently wrote a wonderful tribute to Jim McNamara, recorded a time of 22:32. There was a minute’s silence before the start of the race for the recently deceased Jim McNamara. The minute silence was followed by an appreciative round of applause in memory of the Donore harriers legend.

Eamonn Coghlan was another welcome entrant who made a late decision to run the 5k and dipped under his target time of 25 minutes. The world 5,000m champion of 1983 runs sparingly now with golf his main focus. However he may look at doing some more regular running and is aiming at training 10-20k a  week.

It proved to be another  great festival of running with MSB putting on another great show and the Mansion House proving the perfect HQ once more with copious post race refreshments and as well as lots of activities for the children

For event gallery click HERE

For full results click HERE