Deirdre Finn from Tipperary wins Belfast 24 hour race...

The first woman finisher home in the Belfast 24 hours race over the weekend (Sat 23rd July) was Deirdre Finn of Killaloe in Tipperary and Bilboa AC. With 47 individual runners taking part in the event, Deirdre ran 112 miles in the 24 hours to finish in 6th position overall. The first man was John O'Regan from Kildare.

From the BBC...."However, performance of the race came arguably from women's winner Finn who added 22 miles to last year's best female time set by Lynne Hanna. Hanna improved her personal best as she also went through the 100-mile barrier while Hungarian Timea Bontovics was third best female with 91 miles. In all, 18 athletes went beyond 100 miles in the day-long event."

The only other Munster based athlete taking part was Mike Cunningham of Bilboa AC in Limerick who finished in 7th place overall with approx 112 miles.

Report from the BBC news website HERE with another report on this online news website