Gallery & Results: Hardman Killarney 2022
This year’s Hardman Killarney hosted the 2022 Long Distance National Championships. Always an epic challenge, participants swim 3.8km before biking the 180km Ring of Kerry and running a marathon in Killarney National Park.
Deegan & O’Reilly Win in Killarney
Westport TC’s Aichlinn O’Reilly and Athy TC’s Anna Deegan were the overall winners after leading from the swim to the finish line.
In his first outing at the distance O’Reilly put in an impressive time of 8:57:56 over the challenging course. Speaking afterwards O’Reilly spoke of the new experience;
“It more or less went to plan, I was hoping I’d be able to hold on a bit better towards the end of the run but it’s my first one, I’ve never done it before. I’m delighted with it really at the end of the day.”
“It’s completely different, a middle distance is way closer to Olympic distance than this is to a middle. It’s such a long day out. You can’t go into the red at all, you have to stay in control and measure your pace the entire way. There’s no coming back if you go too hard.”
Brian Sexton was second in 9:47:10, Stephen Rowan third in 10:05:31.
Women’s 2022 Long Distance National Champ Anna Deegan was thrilled to cross the line first;
“I slowed it down a bit on the hill each time, thanks to advice I’d gotten from athletes who had been here before. I purposely slowed it down a bit on that and then tried to keep it between 5 and 6 minute pace then”
“This was my ‘A’ race. Not in a million years did I think I’d be standing here after winning it, this is just, I can’t believe it. I genuinely cannot believe it, I can’t believe I just won a race. It just means the world to me.”
Izabela Tomaszewicz was second in a time of 13:15:46 and West Cork Tri’s Irene Herlihy third in 13:57:43.
Results & Images
Full results on SportSplits.com.
All images in this album are by Stephen Kelleghan. For more of Stephen’s fantastic work, visit his Flickr account here.
