Barr, who finished fourth in the 400m hurdles at the Rio Olympic Games, will go head-to-head with Paul Byrne and Ben Kiely in the invitation event at the AAI Indoor Games in Abbotstown, Dublin.

Byrne, 27, and 25-year-old Barr, last raced one another at the Irish national track and field championships in July last year, with Barr pipping his training partner to the win.

The three athletes took to the starting blocks at the 2016 edition of the competition, with Barr taking the win, Kiely in third and Byrne in fourth.

Byrne, who recently spoke to Fast Running about his experiences ‘when races don’t go to plan’, represented Ireland at the World University Games in Taipei last year.

Keily, a gold medal winner at the European Youth Olympics in 2011, Barr and Byrne, have all just returned from warm weather training in Tenerife and will be keen to open their seasons with a strong performance, in what should be a thrilling race for spectators.

The Irish first, is the last event of the day at 4:35pm in the National Indoor Arena.

Other athletes on the provisional entry list include Olympian Kerry O’Flaherty, John Travers, who won the Raheny 5 mile last weekend and national 100m hurdles champion Sarah Lavin. Danny Mooney and Eoin Everard are among the 1500m entries, with Mooney also down for the 3000m.

National indoor champion, Kieran Kelly heads the men’s 800m entries, while Claire Mooney is the standout name in the women’s event.

Commonwealth Games bound Leon Reid and previous Commonwealth participant Jason Harvey are also amongst the entries, as are Emerald A.C’s Amy O Donoghue and An Ríocht’s Laura Crowe, and 2017 European Youth Olympic medalists Patience Jumbo-Gula and Sarah Healy.

The action at the National Indoor Arena gets underway at 11am with the women’s 3000m race walk.

Provisional entries can be found here and timetable here.

The post Thomas Barr to race first-ever Irish indoor 400m hurdles appeared first on Fast Running.

The 400m hurdler has been making great strides in recent years, representing Ireland at the European Athletics Championships in 2016 followed by the World University Games last year. In July 2017 he went to third on the Irish all-time rankings with a 50.03 PB at the Brussels Grand Prix, agonisingly close to a sub-50s clocking, but impetus enough to keep him motivated for an even more successful 2018 season.

It was at the European championships in Amsterdam where the St Abbans athlete suffered his most disappointing race to date, however, with a strong winter’s training and the fastest ever 400mH season opener of his athletics career behind him making the experience all the harder to bear.

Here the 27-year-old Hayley Harrison-coached hurdler reveals exactly what happened, how he dealt with it during and after the race, and what he’s learned from it.

The promising build up to Byrne’s senior Irish international debut tinged with an ominous Achilles issue

The Killeshin-born athlete had started the 2016 season with a bang, producing his fastest ever opener and running PB after PB following a month’s training in Stellenbosch, South Africa the preceding winter. His glittering form and fast-improving times meant he had qualified for his first senior international, the European championships – life could not have been better.

However, just weeks before he flew to Amsterdam for the biggest competition of his life so far, his Achilles tendon started to cause problems: “I could get two to three days training pain-free and then it would flare up again,” he explains. “Anyone who’s experienced Achilles tendinopathy will know what it’s like. This all came to light at the worst time, and meant I had a broken spell of training in the last two weeks before the championships.”

The European championships 400mH heats – Byrne’s disappointing race

The 2017 World University Championships semi-finalist paints a vivid picture of the emotions involved in competing on a senior world stage for the first time: “Lining up on the start line for the heats of the Euros was a nerve-racking experience, my heart was pounding out of my chest and the butterflies were in my stomach.

“I knew I had to run 51 seconds to make it through to the semi-finals, and, with that broken spell of training in the lead up, I was unsure of my fitness levels. I decided I needed to leave it all on the line and have no regrets – go hard from the gun over the first five or six hurdles.”

While that is exactly what Byrne did, it all started to go wrong around the 7th hurdle, when he says he realised he was having to ‘reach and bound a little for the hurdles’.

He explains how his race fell apart, reflecting on it seemingly in slow motion: “I could see for the first time in the race out of the corner of my eye the different coloured singlets of Ukraine, Germany, Denmark, all starting to pass me by. My race at that point was well and truly over. I had given it everything but the fitness and race sharpness wasn’t there.

“The last 100 metres of that race was the longest and loneliest of my life. I went from being in the top two to finishing second to last in my heat. I remember turning to a Belgian athlete who finished just behind me – we had raced a few weeks previously and both ran 50 seconds – and he said ‘not our day today’.”

The aftermath of a disappointing race

Dazed and emotional, Byrne not only had to deal with the fact he’d exited his first senior international in the heats, but he was also forced to speak to the media in the immediate aftermath.

The experience still fresh in his memory, he recalls how he dealt with the situation: “I remember walking through the mixed zone – which was a whole new experience to me – and being asked for an interview with the national broadcaster. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel I’d done myself, my family, my coaches or my country justice. It had been a long road to get to that point, but I assured the reporter I’d return stronger next time. I then chatted with my coach (Hayley Harrison), who gave me a hug and a shoulder to cry on while she listened to me vent. Nothing more needed to be said.”

Bouncing back from disappointment

The full-time Regional Development Officer at Athletics Ireland doesn’t have much time to dwell on bad races, and instead chooses to look forwards instead of backwards. He applied this positive mentality to his Euros experience with great success, running one of his fastest ever times at the Morton Games just two weeks later (50.81).

He reflects: “The world of athletics doesn’t stand still for too long and people quickly forget – you just have to dust yourself down, clear your head and move on. I went back home into a small bit of training and looked after my Achilles, but wanted to race again quickly to prove I was much better than what I had produced in Amsterdam.”

Byrne’s advice for how to deal with bad races

It’s clear the Irish 300mH record holder is not one to dwell on disappointments but instead chooses classic prose to express how he feels other athletes should deal with their own race disasters: “To use a quote from Samuel Beckett, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,’ – that’s the advice I’d give to any athlete. Don’t be afraid of failing, use it to your benefit.

“You’ll learn more about yourself as a person and an athlete in your moments of disappointment or in your failures than you do when you win a race or succeed. They build resilience, which is something so important for the sport we’re in. They also allow you to reflect on how you can change things to make sure you improve next time.”

Poignantly, Byrne finishes by telling any aspiring athlete to remember that, one day, all the hard work will pay off: “It can be a cruel sport for sure, but all the bad days and disappointments are totally justified for those couple of moments in time when everything clicks and you run the race of your life.”

This article is part of a series that asks runners what they’ve learnt from bad race experiences and their advice on how to deal with it. Related articles include Dewi Griffiths: How do you bounce back from a bad race?, Elle Vernon: 
the negative impact of outside stresses on running and Gemma Steel: the pressure from others’ expectations.

The post Paul Byrne: when races don’t go to plan appeared first on Fast Running.

Lavin’s posting of posting of 13.54 in the last of five 100m hurdles heats, was good for the third automatic qualification spot.

The 23-year-old, who won an Irish national title in July, will line-up in a top field that includes Great Britain’s Alicia Barrett, in the second of three semi-finals on Saturday (August 26).

Healy, second to line up for Ireland’s athletics delegation, took to the track for round one of the women’s 200m with the first three in each securing qualification to the semi-finals later that day.

The 22-year-old sprinter clocked an impressive 23.87 to take the victory and an automatic qualification spot, finishing 0.26 seconds ahead of the nearest challenger.

Healy is back on the track at 10.15am GMT to contest the first of three semi-finals. The Irish sprinter has the third fastest time this year amongst the field in her race, with a good performance Healy has every chance of making Friday’s final.

Following the 200m semi-finals, Ireland’s Paul Byrne is back in action for the 400m hurdles semi-finals, lining up at 10.50am GMT.

Byrne made it through the earlier rounds with a time of 51.06 and will hope to run closer to his 50.03 personal best to advance to the final.

Fast Running’s daily updates on the World University Games can be found here.

The full schedule of athletics events can be found here, and for live coverage visit livestream.com/fisu.

The post Sarah Lavin and Phil Healy Advance to Semi-Finals at the World University Games appeared first on Fast Running.

Byrne took to the track for round one of the men’s 400m hurdles with the first three in each going through automatically, plus the next six fastest times to the semi-finals.

In the third of six heats the 27-year-old finished fourth missing out on automatic qualification, but his time of 51.06 was good to secure one of the remaining spots for Friday’s (August 25) semi-finals.

Byrne, the training partner of Irish Olympian Thomas Barr, was placed sixteenth out of the twenty-four advancing to the next round.

With a personal best of 50.03 clocked at the Brussels Grand Prix last month, Byrne has every chance of advancing to the final if he can find a similar performance on Friday.

Niamh Whelan was in action in the women’s 100m semi-finals after advancing through rounds one and two on Wednesday, with times of 11.71 and 11.74 respectively.

In a strong field that featured Jamaican star Sashalee Forbes, Whelan crossed the line in 11.81 to finish in seventh place.

With only the first four in each semi-final qualifying, the 27-year-old missed out a place in the final, finishing twelfth overall.

Finishing ahead of Whelan, were two athletes who placed in the top four of the final later on Thursday evening, including 21-year-old Forbes, the runaway gold medalist.

Athletics action from the World University Games resumes tomorrow (Friday 25), with a full day of track races for Irish athletes.

Sarah Lavin begins Friday’s athletics for Ireland in the first round of the women’s 100m hurdles, followed by Philomena Healy in the 200m first round, with Marcus Lawler next in the men’s equivalent.

Paul Byrne is then back on the track to contest the second of three 400m hurdles semi-finals.

Emma Mitchell and Shona Heaslip were scheduled to conclude the Irish involvement in Friday’s athletics in the first round of the 5000m, but at the moment it is unclear if they are going ahead, in which case it will be straight final on Sunday.

Details on when Irish athletes in competition at the World University Games can found here and the full athletics timetable can be found here.

For live coverage visit livestream.com/fisu.

The post Ireland’s Paul Byrne Seals Semi-Final Place at World University Games appeared first on Fast Running.