The 48th running of the Dunboyne AC 4 mile Road Race took place on the 25th March 2018. A quality field contained two Rathfarnham WSAF AC athletes. Both had excellent runs with Seán Hehir finishing 4th in a PB time of 18:46 and Bobby Murphy finishing 9th in 19:30. Well done to both of you.

Rathfarnham WSAF Athletic Club had a number of athletes competing at the European Master Indoor Championships in Madrid. First up on track was Ronan Kearns finishing 2nd in heat 4 of the M40 800m, qualifying automatically for the semi-final which took place only a few hours later on the same day. Ronan missed out on a place in the final by the lowest of margins finishing 5th place and ranked 11th overall in an event stacked with former world class middle distance runners. Highlight of the championship was Paul Fleming scoring on the men's O40 5k cross country team which won team silver in a highly competitive category. Spain, Ireland and Belgium filled the podium places. Paul just about kept Ronan at bay as they both approached the finish line locked together battling for the remaining place to score on team.  Ireland finished 11th out of 32 countries competing in Madrid. We punched well above our weight for a small country of our size, 8 Gold, 13 silver and 8 bronze total 29 medals.

It was a great win for Seán Hehir at Limerick's premiere event, the Adare 10k on Sunday 25th February. The victory was by over a minute on his nearest rival in a time of 31:22. Well done to West Limerick AC who hosted this well organised event. Congratulations to Seán who is looking sharp for 2018.

FULL RESULTS HERE

There was a feast of fantastic performances by Rathfarnham WSAF AC athletes on the Abbotstown indoor track this weekend. Senior Gold medals in the 60m, 200m and 800m. Stephen Gaffney won both the 60m and 200m and both in new Championship record times of 6.87 and 21.55.  The icing on the cake for Stephen was that his 200m time is a new PB!

In what was one of the most spectacular races of the day Lee Byrne won the 800m by 0.02s. Lying in first position on the last lap he was passed on the final bend and fell back to third. It looked like bronze but he dug deeper than ever before to spectacularly dip on the line to win gold by the narrowest of margins. The time was 1:56.07. What a fantastic spectator race!

In the women’s senior shot putt Isabel Mullarney finished 5^th with a 9.61 throw.

The 3000m saw Paul Flemming winning M40 gold in an excellent time of 9:33.7.

In the 1500m M35 Ronan Kearns won silver in a time of 4:21.39 despite having only raced two days before (800m in 2:03:30 to come 5th) and being 39 years and 364 days old! Hard man John McHugh doubled up winning silvers in the M60 1500m in 5:32.10 and M60 800m in 4:45.55 with Robert Bigger wining gold in the M60 800m in 2:23.46. Vanessa Sallier won the W45 bronze in the 400m in a time of 1:14.55.

Our esteemed President, Eoin McLoughlin returned to competition after many years absence to come 4^th in the M50 800m in 2:40.72. This is only the beginning…….

Pearse Coyle ran a solid 4:54.2 in the M50 1500m to come just outside the medals in 4^th and Ken Crowley ran 8.23 in the M45 60m.

Well done to everybody who took part and thank you to Timetronics for the photo of the 200m finish.