Brendan Boyce sets new PB in the 50k walk in Zurich

The obvious big news story today was the world champion Rob Heffernan having to withdraw from the 50 km race walk in Zurich at the European championships. It really is such a tough event. A full marathon is 42.2kms in length and this is 8kms further...just over 31 miles......and it's race walking as opposed to running. It's hard to appreciate just how fit these guys are.

The winner of the race was Yohann Diniz of France who set a new world record time of 3:32:33. He went through the marathon mark in under 3 hours!

It's also worth noting the achievement of Brendan Boyce who was the other Irish interest in the race. Brendan who is coached by Rob finished in a very credible 16th place in a new personal best time of 3h 51m 34s. That's almost 3 minutes faster than his previous personal best of 3:54:24 set at the World Championships in Moscow in 2013.

Here is a breakdown of Brendan's splits...
10k...23rd...46:25 // 20k...21st...1:32:44 // 30k...20th...2:18:49 // 40k...17th...3:04:21

Just to put those times in perspective, if you ran at his average pace then you would do a half-marathon in 1:37:43 and a full marathon in 3:15:25........except of course Brendan was race walking.

A big improvement for the man from Donegal.

Post race interview...