ANN-MARIE McGlynn and Gary Murray carried off the top prizes at the Podium 4 Sport Joe Seeley 10K held at Ormeau Park on Saturday.
A sell-out field of over 1000 runners turned up for the race held in cold, wet and windy conditions.
Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said that a week is a long time in politics but the past fortnight must have seemed a lifetime for Ann-Marie McGlynn in her athletics career.
Two weeks ago she was on top of the world after running away from a strong field to take the women’s title at the British & Irish Masters’ Cross Country Championships at Santry Demesne in Dublin.
Roll forward eight days and she is back at Santry with a place on the Irish team for the European Cross Country firmly fixed in her sights.
She had captained the Irish ladies to a surprise team bronze last year in Bulgaria and she wanted to be part of the action again.
However, life is never straight forward and after getting clipped on the heel and losing her shoe, she never recovered and failed to finish.
Sport is unforgiving and selectors even more so with the result that there was no place on the team next month for the Tullamore-born Strabane woman.
So it was back to the drawing board and business as usual for the 35-year-old Letterkenny AC athlete at the Joe Seeley 10K.
After running shoulder to shoulder with Rio Olympics-bound steeplechaser Kerry O’Flaherty to the halfway point reached in 15:37, McGlynn powered away to win by 11 seconds in a personal best time of 34:18.
The game O’Flaherty stuck it out for second in 34:29 with Gladys Ganiel O’Neill a clear third in 36:01. Laura Graham (36:37), Kelly Neely (37:19) and Rebecca Henderson (37:29) made up the top six.
Ann Terek impressed taking the F50 prize with a 39:56 timing.
In contrast the outcome of the men’s race was never in doubt with Donegal man Gary Murray taking the initiative almost from the gun.
Sporting the colours of Dublin club Clonliffe Harriers for the first time in a northern race, Murray passed through the halfway point in 15:37 before going on to win by 16 seconds in 31:06.
Paddy Hamilton and Scott Rankin went through 5K shoulder to shoulder ten seconds behind Murray but Hamilton, a Newry-based physiotherapist, got the better of his Foyle Valley rival up the final climb into the park.
The Slieve Gullion runner crossed the finish line in 31:22 with Rankin another 14 seconds back. Chris Madden finished strongly to take third in 31:51, well ahead of Gareth Hill (32:12) and Brian Campbell (32:16).
The Masters shone despite the weather with Gary Henderson winning the M45 category in 33:54 while Dale Mathers was leading M50 in 35:35. Dermot Kerr showed he has lost little of his old magic with a 36:16 clocking to win the M55 age group race.
Gerry Doherty was top M60 after failing to break 40 minutes by just 13 seconds while at the other end of the age scale 17-year-old Craig McMeechan was leading Junior in 32:59.
