McGlynn finishes among Top 30 in European Championships marathon

Mucklagh native Ann Marie McGlynn (née Larkin) made her international debut in the marathon for Ireland at the European Championships on Monday.

McGlynn finished 29th in a time of 2:38:26 in Munich and was the second Irish runner to cross the line behind Fionnuala McCormack, who came in seventh.

Ireland finished fifth in the team event.

Speaking immediately after the race, McGlynn, who now lives in Strabane with her family, said: “The job was to get around and to be a strong as I could. The Top 30 would have been nice and I think I just dipped in so, yeah, I'll take it.”

It was a sensational twist in McGlynn's long running career. The now 42-year-old 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 to help deal with the aftermath of her son being born seriously ill.

Since then, there has been a sensational second act to her sporting career. 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.

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