Catherina McKiernan's remarkable season will take her to Paris next Sunday for the latest challenge in her new road racing career.
McKiernan heads the list of entries for a race which is confidently expected to provide her with her ninth consecutive success since her win in the Dublin minimarathon last June.
As yet, the details of her build-up programme for the London marathon have not been finalised and no decision taken on whether she runs in a half marathon at Lisbon on March 15th.
On that decision may well depend her plans for the World Cross-Country championship in Morocco where she rates among the long range favourites for a title which has consistently eluded her over the years.
While McKiernan continues to blaze a trail on the international front, the improving quality of domestic competition was again illustrated during the BLE Indoor Games at Nenagh last Sunday.
Gary Ryan's sprinting did much to enliven the last outdoor season and encouragingly he has now taken that form indoors. For the second consecutive week he broke the national 60 metres record when beating Kevin Cogley in a time of 6.88 seconds.
Cogley's figures of 6.95 represented a career best and there was encouragement, too, for Leevale's David Power who was third in 7.05. The corresponding women's race yielded a national record for Waterford's Aoife Hearne who beat Ciara Sheehy on the line in 7.63, a 10th of a second inside the old figures.
Giving substance to her reputation as one of the most talented of the emerging athletes, Sheehy was timed at 7.74 and later broke Michelle Carroll's stadium record by winning the 200 metres in 24.56.
Leading South African athletes were warned yesterday that they would be banned from this year's Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in September if they withdraw from the South Africa-Russia athletics match in Pretoria on February 7th without valid reason.
