Callan takes IMC by storm with big PB

HUGH Callan was Drogheda & District AC’s star of the show by a distance at Saturday’s IMC track meeting in Leixlip.

Without a doubt, the run of the day belonged to Callan who took a huge chunk off his 400m time to record a new personal best of 54.84sec.

Callan, who has been making steady progress throughout this season, produced the run of his life when it mattered most to finish a very creditable third in the Mixed 400m race.

Running in the same event was clubmate Gerry O’Connor (pictured right) who finished in seventh place in a fine 1:00.14 and will be hoping to win a medal at the upcoming National Masters Track Championships.

In the Men’s 800m World Masters Championship bronze medallist Mark O’Shea continued his streak of sub two-minute performances and his time of 1:59.01 puts him right up there with the best in his category for this distance.

In the Men’s 1500m David Walsh, strengthened by a great winter’s training, ran hard to record a speedy 4:18. Passing through the first 400m in a super-fast 63 seconds meant Walsh was going to suffer plenty in the next three laps. Nevertheless, he stuck to his task to finish well and there’s more to come from him in an evenly paced race.

With last weekend being a quiet one on the racing front, many Drogheda & District runners decided to tackle the Saturday morning Parkrun in Oldbridge Estate.

Caitriona Tuite and Fiona Buckley had good reason to be happy as they both recorded new PB times for this quite challenging 5k cross-country course.

Also running well was Damien Floyd who was the club’s first man to finish in 62nd place overall. Further down the field, but also running well, were Paula O’Brien, Orlagh McCardle and Aisling Neacy.

Looking ahead, the final round of D&D’s graded track meetings take place on Thursday August 11th. This year’s series has proven very popular with all the local athletic clubs and also with visiting athletes who have travelled from as far as Derry and Galway to compete.

Over the course of the six meetings the standard has risen, with many athletes having to up their game to finish in the top three in their event. In the Men’s 800m, for example, anybody thinking of finishing well up in the ‘A’ race would want to be bringing their sub two-minute shoes with them, such is the standard.

A similar improvement has taken place in the shorter onelap laonelap event, the 400m. At the start oof the series, D&D would have perhaps one athlete breaking 55 seseconds, but now four or more ccan run that time.

Events for the last graded meeting inmeeting are the 100, 400, 1500 and 33,000m and long jump and the fifirst event starts at 7pm.

Meanwhile, this Friday’s 5k roroad race hosted by Glenmore AC has most of the Drogheda club’s summer road group chomping aat the bit!

This hugely popular race, which tatakes place in Carlingford, is run over a very fast course, with a good road surface.

If this event was a Casino, it would be the one where most runners would put all their chips on the table!

The past two months of interval training, running the long 800m and 1km repetitions needed to prepare for this race will have been worth it if the much sought-after personal best times are achieved.