Armstrong hoping for a clear run to Paris – Western People

Hugh Armstrong in action in the men’s marathon at the European Athletics Championships in Munich last summer. Picture: INPHO/Morgan Treacy

By Mark Higgins

Hugh Armstrong laid his claim to a fairly remarkable record in 2022. Back in April, at the Wrexham Elite Marathon, the Knockmore native ran the fastest marathon ever recorded on Welsh soil. His time of 2.14:04 was enough to secure his qualification for the European Championships in Munich later in the summer, giving Armstrong his first opportunity to run the 26-mile race in an Irish vest.

His progress over this past year came in the wake of an extremely frustrating 2021 season, in which Armstrong didn’t race competitively at all. After a strong 2020, in which he set what remains a personal best marathon time of 2:12.26 in Sevilla, Armstrong’s training was derailed by successive stress fractures to his sacrum bones in early 2021. The injuries effectively ruled him out of elite-level competition for the year.

“I got one on my right side in January and then just as I was coming back from that, I did the left one as well. It’s kind of your lower back, at the top of the pelvis,” said Armstrong, who turned 28 in September.

“Stress fractures would be common enough; they’d be more common in your foot or your shin, but it was a sore thing. It took a long time to come back from. It was probably about 12 or 14 weeks off running, for each one. To get the second one was rough. It ended up being an Olympic year too, so it was a tough enough time.”

That time he set in Sevilla in early 2020 had been less than a minute outside the qualifying standard for the Tokyo Olympics, which were eventually held in summer 2021 after being delayed by Covid. Armstrong went from having a decent chance of qualifying for the Olympics to facing the long, hard slog of rehabilitation.

He at least had his work to keep his mind busy. Armstrong works as an accountant in the Finance Department of An Post, based in Dublin’s GPO. He is currently studying to sit his final accountancy exams early this year, balancing work, study and a rigorous training regime.

Early last year, with the sacrum issues thankfully behind him, Armstrong joined up with the Dublin Track Club, a group of distance runners who train in the capital under the guidance of Feidhlim Kelly, one of the leading coaches in Irish athletics. He credited the new training group with a marked upturn in fortunes in 2022 (while stressing that Ballina AC remains very much his club.)

The race in Wrexham in late April was his first competitive marathon in well over a year. Armstrong had his doubts about whether his body was fully ready for the rigours of the marathon in the wake of the injuries, but he needn’t have worried; he turned in a brilliant display of front-running to take the gold medal.

“That was a good day. It was one of my best days, especially having come back from the adversity of the previous year,” he said.

“I had been training away nicely in January-February time, and I was looking at the European Championships in the summer. I was talking to Feidhlim and we were over and back a little bit over whether I should go for a marathon, so soon after getting back.

“I thought I had a good chance of getting the European qualifying time, which was 2.14:30. We went for it late-ish in the spring, in April, towards the end of the window to get the time.

“I had trained really well, I knew I was in good shape. The way things worked out, it was on a lapped course in Wrexham, and the pacemakers didn’t go that far; about 10 or 11 miles in, I was running all on my own. I managed to hold the pace on my own, which was difficult enough, but I held on nice and evenly and ran 2.14:04, and got the win in the race as well.”

It was also, remarkably, the fastest marathon anyone has ever run on Welsh soil, breaking a Welsh All-Comers record which had stood since 1963.

“It is nice to have a record like that,” Armstrong offered, “although it isn’t even my best time. I’ve ran faster before in a marathon, I ran 2.12 in 2020. But that was probably close to as good a performance that day in Wrexham because I ran it on my own and won the race.”

The time was also good enough to seal his place at August’s European Championships in Munich, an opportunity to represent his country and race against world-class opposition. It was also his first-ever marathon in an Irish vest; Armstrong had previously run for Ireland in the World Half-Marathon and at European Cross-Country level, but never over the full 26.2 miles.

Unfortunately, Munich didn’t pan out quite as he would have wanted. Tendon issues affected his preparations and there is a definite note of regret in how Armstrong recalls the race.

“The race itself was not great,” he stated. “The month coming into it, I had a few niggly things. I had a sore Achilles tendon, and a sore hamstring. The last month before it, I was more just managing myself to be able to race, rather than being able to train properly for it. I wasn’t fit enough, really. Parts of my body were giving up on me and the last 10k was ugly enough in Munich.

“I managed to finish it; towards the end, that was all I could do (he ran a 2.25:27). But it was good experience. As far as the performance went it was disappointing but it was one of these days when there wasn’t much more I could do.”

Hugh Armstrong and his Irish teammate Tom O’Keeffe on a practice run at the European Cross Country Championships in Slovakia in 2017. Picture: INPHO/Sasa Pahic Szabo

DIVINE PROVIDENCE

Hugh Armstrong spent six years in the US, as a student athlete at Providence College in Rhode Island, from 2013 to 2019. For four years as an undergraduate, and a further two studying for his post-grad, he lived the life of a collegiate athlete in the US, combining his studies with training and racing under the tutelage of Ray Treacy, the legendary Irish coach and brother of John Treacy, who won silver in the marathon at the 1984 Olympics. Ray has been head coach of the Providence athletic programme since the mid-1980s.

Armstrong was just 18 years old, fresh out of finishing his Leaving Cert in Gortnor Abbey, when he jetted off to New England. You might expect someone so young, leaving a small community in North Mayo, to struggle to adapt to such a drastic change in environment, but Armstrong has nothing but fond memories of his time at Providence.

“I thought it was great!” he laughed.

“You’re just out of school and my parents weren’t that keen on me going that young. But it was a very good opportunity. Looking back on it now, I’d recommend it to any other young Irish athlete who had the opportunity. You get exposed to a much higher level of competition out there.

“As you start to develop as an underage or junior athlete, you start to think you’re good. But you go out there and you realise you’re not that good at all; you’re suddenly racing with fellas who are 22 or 23 and have a few years of experience over you. It puts you in the mindset that you need to work a lot harder to get to the level required.

“So it’s both the level of competition, and being in a training group. I would have done a lot of my training on my own in secondary school. You get to train with a group of fellas at your level, and then another group who are a bit better than you. By the time you’re in your third or fourth year, hopefully you’re one of the leaders. It’s a very good system.

“The money in it is just incomparable to what you get here,” he continued. “You get all your books paid for, your accommodation, your food. It was a full scholarship for four years, it’s all covered. You’re almost semi-professional.

“There are obviously people who had worse experiences than me, I can only talk about my time. Ray Treacy, the coach, being Irish made it a bit more homely and they always had a lot of Irish athletes over there for that reason. So when I was there, there were a lot of Irish on our team, who you could relate to a bit more.”

Aside from the athletic element, moving so far away from home at such a young age exposed Armstrong to the kind of life experiences to which very few Irish teenagers have access. He travelled all over the States running for Providence.

“I would have raced in California a few times, in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin. You get to travel and see America too,” he said.

“You appreciate it more after, how that was all organised for you. Like if I want to go to a race now this year, even the likes of that race in Wrexham, I have to organise all the travel, the flights, the accommodation. There’s a lot of planning involved. You’re nearly used to that all being done for you (in the US). You’re spoilt a bit!”

As he outlined, thigs are somewhat different now. Armstrong very much has responsibility for his own running career these days and trying to combine the training load required to be an elite-level marathoner with working a full-time job and studying for exams is no simple task. It requires diligent time-management, supreme self-discipline and no small amount of sacrifice.

“It’s busy, very busy at times,” he said. “I am lucky in that my employer, An Post, have been fairly flexible in allowing me to do my training. My boss is very into the sport. When I train with Feidhlim’s group, he lets me start early and then go away for two hours to train with them, say on a Tuesday and Thursday from about 10 in the morning, and then come back to work after.

“The exams are probably the toughest thing; without the exams, life would be a lot easier. But we get study leave for the exams as well, we get time off to study. At times you would think ‘I’m spreading myself fairly thin here.’ You could be out twice a day running, doing your gym stuff, stretching, making sure you get good sleep and good nutrition. The injuries in the last couple of years, you could maybe put down to that a little bit.

“I wouldn’t mind at some stage having a go at training full-time, maybe after I pass all the exams. I’d like to have a go for a year or two, just so that I wouldn’t regret never trying that. A lot of the fellas I train with actually do train full-time,” he continued.

The yearning to try his hand at full-time training and see how far his talent can take him is clearly a strong one for Armstrong, but it’s far from a straightforward decision. Financially, the life of a full-time athlete in Ireland can be a strain. Armstrong was cut off from Sport Ireland funding for 2022 after not racing in 2021 due to his injury issues, although he is hopeful of getting back on the funding programme next year after qualifying for Munich.

“There’s funding from different places, the likes of the Gerry Kiernan Foundation. You could end up trying to race for money too, in prize money,” he offered.

“Sponsorship from shoe companies is probably the most lucrative thing for athletes, if you have someone like New Balance or Adidas on board. That’s probably the main avenue for most athletes hoping to get a bit.”

Looking ahead to the new year, the ultimate goal of the Paris Olympics in the summer of 2024 is starting to materialise on every athlete’s horizon, Armstrong’s included. At the moment he is slowly working his way back to full fitness, having taken some time off training after Munch to rehab his tendon injuries, but he is already making plans for 2023.

“The bone injuries I had the previous year, they’ll heal up properly, but tendons are more tricky. They stay with you,” he said. “You can’t rest them as such, you have to put load through them. So I’ve been gradually making my way, taking my time. That’s where I am now, just gradually getting myself back up for the new year.

“The first goal will be just to get myself back training, running pain-free. But for sure, from now on everything will be geared towards qualifying for Paris. When the Olympics were originally meant to be in 2020, I had run that 2.12 marathon and it was 2.11:30 for the qualifying time, so I was less than a minute off.

“Now the standard is harder this time, it’s 2.09:40. But there are also the rankings, where you collect points. A lot of our best marathon runners will be looking to run the Dublin Marathon in 2023, that will be one of my big targets. There’s also a World Half-Marathon next year, which I’ve run in before.

“In the spring now, if I get back training properly, I’ll be looking to run a fast half-marathon and try to qualify for the World Half-Marathon. That will be in the build-up to Dublin and that will be the big target. I’ll probably need to run two good marathons in 2023, if I don’t get the 2.09:40, if I’m going to get to Paris.

“That’s a steep standard, but I’ll have a right go at it.”

Filed under: athletics, knockmore, Mayo newspaper, North Mayo, sport