The National Junior & U23 Indoor Championships took place in AIT on Sunday where the hard work of the last few months paid rich dividends for Sineád Gaffney. Sineád who juggles her sport between athletics and camogie was on fire a few years ago as an U18 when she ran 2.23.93 to place 4th in the National U18 Indoor 800m, a performance that came on the back of a solid 4 months winter training. Camogie took first place in the meantime with Sinead featuring on successful Galway and Craughwell teams.

But the last 4 months has seen Sinead again put a lot of effort into the athletics and yesterday In AIT, the benefits of this work paid off again where Sineád ran a splendid PB of 2:23.13 to take the National U23 Silver medal – a fantastic achievement. Sinead ran the perfect race with splits of 36.06, 36.63, 35.41, 35.50 – a superbly paced race. Its onwards and upwards now hopefully and Sinead can build on the good training and good times to knock further seconds off her PB and who knows how far she can take it! Sinead’s time came agonisingly close to setting a new club record – with the existing record held by Linda Porter with a time of 2.23.09.

Also in action in the 800m,

Gavin Cooney ran a good PB in the U23 grade where he ran 2.04.05 knocking more than a second off his PB and edging closer to the elusive 2 minute mark – great progress for Gavin who is another who successfully juggles his sport between GAA and athletics being a squad member of the victorious Sarsfields County Senior Champions. Gavin’s splits in the 800 were 29.80, 30.59, 30.96 and 32.70 – a very solid performance.

You can watch both Sineád and Gavin’s races at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWahEcJ7iMQ – forward to 4:08 for Sinead’s race and 4:28 for Gavin’s.

In the sprints Conor Duggan just missed out on making the finals of the U20 60m with a time of 7.18 in the 60m and placed just outside the medals in 4th place in the 200m in a time of 22.76 having earlier ran 2.73 in the heats. While in the jumps, Matthew McKiernan had a fine performance to take 4th place in the U20 triple jump with a best of 11.97m.