National marathon gold for Offaly woman

Offaly native Anne Marie McGlynn (née Larkin) has been crowned national marathon champion.

The 43-year-old, who now lives in Strabane and runs for Letterkenny AC in Donegal, was first Irish woman home in the Irish Life Dublin Marathon today in a time of 2:34:13. The Dublin event also doubled as the national championships.

It's McGlynn's first national marathon gold and continues a remarkable second act in her long athletic career.

Earlier this year, she was part of the Irish women's team to take bronze at the Spar European Cross Country Championships at La Mandria Park in Italy and in August 2022, she represented Ireland in the European Marathon Championships.

McGlynn was a star athlete in her youth and took up an athletics scholarship in UCD in 1998.

However, she left the sport for six years before returning in 2012. She competed in the 2013 and 2014 European Cross Country Championships, captaining the Irish senior women's team to an unlikely bronze medal in the second of those in Bulgaria.

She also ran in the 2018 European Cross Country Championships, more than 19 years after she represented Ireland in the World Cross Country Championships in Belfast in 1999 at U20 level.

In 2020, she missed out on the qualifying time to represent Ireland in the Olympics marathon in Tokyo by just four seconds.