Emma moves up to fourth in her age group

After her success in the Northern Ireland Senior Championships in June where she ran a new PB of 4.33.52 to finish second to Ciara Mageean and after winning the U20 & 23 Irish Championships for 1500m (just outside her PB, 4.34.20) Emma entered the Irish Senior Championships for the experience of running with Ireland’s top senior international athletes.

In the strong field of Irish internationals such as Hazel Murphy and Fionnualla Britton, Emma sat in the main group for the first two laps; then the top seven broke away for the rest of the field.

Emma worked hard to stay with the top athletes and for most of the race was in fifth and sixth place. With a very fast last 400m Emma held on to sixth place and managed to smash her PB by nearly five seconds to run 4.28.67, which ranks her fourth in the UK for U17 1500m.

Emma was very pleased with her run and to break 4min 30 for the first time was a huge achievement. You can see Emma’s race on RTE OB Sports at www.rte.ie/tv/obsport.

On Saturday July 17 Emma was in action again at the Schools International Track and Field Championships in Glasgow. After her recent performances at the NI & Ulster Schools, Irish Schools, Emma was selected to represent Ireland in the 1500m at the Schools International.

At a very windy Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow Emma raced against the top athletes from England, Scotland and Wales.

With the strong winds the first lap was a bit slow but then the pace picked up after 600m. Emma sat in fourth place for the first three laps and then, with just over a lap to go, Jessica Judd (England) made a break from the rest of the field.

With 300m to go the pace picked up again and Emma moved into third place which she held to the finish. In a tough mixed pace race Emma ran 4.37.13 just 5 seconds behind first placed Jessica and just over a second behind second placed Siofra.

Emma’s result helped the Irish Schools team to finish second in the competition.