Olympic qualifying times for Jonny Mellor and Kevin Seaward in Seville
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The Marathon in Seville produced top tier performances for Manchester-based Jonny Mellor and Jip Vastenburg and Loughborough-based Kevin Seaward (pictured afer the race) who set a new Northern Ireland record.
Jonny Mellor (handicap -6.0) has been training well throughout the winter and justified his expectations with a PB of 2:10:04 in an Olympic qualifying time. Mellor worked with a group throughout the whole race including Kevin Seaward (handicap -3.7) who ran a negative split to come home with a marvellous 2:10:08. This was a PB and an Olympic qualifying time plus a Northern Ireland Marathon record, the 3rd time the record has fallen since October. Stephen Scullion (handicap -4.8) ran 2:12:01 to break the 40 year old record Northern Ireland record at the Dublin Marathon in October before Paul Pollock (handicap -4.5) ran 2:10:25 in December to set the record again in Valencia. Northern Ireland now have three athletes who have qualified for Tokyo as Stephen Scullion went on to finish 5th in the Gold Label Marathon race in Houston in January.
Other notable performances came from Irishman, Hugh Armstrong of Ballina AC, who ran a massive PB to finish in 2:12:26, and Sheffield-based Spaniard Iraitz Arrospide with 2:13:26.
Team New Balance Manchester athlete, Jip Vastenburg, produced a great debut performance of 2:33:38 and orienteer, Fanni Gyurko (handicap -0.2) of Central AC ran a PB of 2:35:54 to finish 18th.
Other results from the weekend are on the following links: