Change of plans help Joan to run stunning new 60m PB

BY KIERAN McCARTHY

A CHANGE of plans has turned Joan Healy’s indoor season around.

Immediately after the recent national senior indoor championships – at which Joan won silver in the women’s 60m – the plan was to call a halt to her indoor season and focus on her outdoor 100m.

But in the days that followed, that all changed, as a route to the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul this weekend opened up.

Ahead of the Europeans Joan then lined up at a meet on Friday night, and she set a new 60m PB of 7.30, beating her previous best of 7.31 set in 2018. This also moves the Ballineen woman to joint fourth on the Irish all-time list. Ideal timing ahead of her heats at the Europeans on Friday morning.

‘We (Joan and her coaches, Derval O’Rourke and Marian Heffernan) were going to park the indoor stuff after the nationals,’ Joan explains.

‘The real focus this season will be on the 100 and you can see that in my races so far. Usually in a 60 I would be gone whereas now 60 is too short for me, I’m only really getting going at 50 metres and next thing the (finish) line is there.

‘I got the 60m B standard for the Europeans, the qualification goes off rankings, but I didn't take much notice because I had planned to take a break and go back into training for the outdoors. Then my rankings shot up.

‘I did feel a bit unfinished as all my indoor races up until the nationals had felt like hard work whereas the nationals was the first time I did feel like my old self, and then the season was over. We felt there was a bit more in the tank and the European Indoors will add only one more week, then the selection letter came in and we said we’d go for it.’

Joan, bouncing off the back of her new PB, wants to dip into the 7.2s in Istanbul and make a semi-final; that would be the ideal end to her indoor season on Friday.