January preview: Indoor season gets underway as endurance athletes head to World Cross
Elizabeth Egan | Jan 08, 2026
TrackAthletes will celebrate its first birthday in January but, more importantly, the speed and power athletes will hit the boards and some of the endurance athletes will take on the World Cross Country Championships and go in search of European Championship qualification standards at the Valencia 10km.
While by no means the busiest month of the year, January provides a reminder of how short and sharp the indoor season is, and gives a good indication of who to look out for in the months ahead. Here is just some of the action to get fans excited in January.
World Cross Country Championships
The World Cross Country Championships are taking place in the month of January for the first time in the 53-year history of the event. Endurance athletes will descend on Tallahassee, Florida, for the January 10th decider, and among them will be Ireland’s Brian Fay (Senior Men), Fiona Everard, Niamh Allen (both Senior Women) and Noah Harris (U20 Men).
Everard, who recently finished tenth in the senior women’s race at the European Cross Country Championships in Lagoa, was 62nd at the 2024 edition of the global event in Belgrade. Fay, Allen and Harris will all be making their World Cross Country debuts.
The senior men and women will race over 10km, more than 2.5km further than Europeans, while the U20 races will cover approximately 6km, also considerably longer than the European Championship distances. There will also be a 4x2000m mixed relay on the programme.
The event will be on Saturday afternoon (Irish time), and will be available to watch on Virgin Media 2 (in Ireland) and online.
Valencia 10km and other road action
While some of the world’s best distance runners will be racing in Tallahassee, many others will be preparing for one of the world’s fastest 10-kilometre road races in Valencia the following day. The elite startlist includes 120 athletes, including Jack O'Leary who recently finished 5th at the European Cross Country Championship, Cormac Dalton, who was 11th in the same race, and Efrem Gidey, who set the Irish 10km record at this event last year.
O'Leary and Dalton will be targeting the European Championships standard of 27:50. Gidey has already secured that standard, but will, no doubt, be looking to improve the 27:43 he ran there in 2025.
Peter Lynch, who held the Irish National Marathon Record for part of 2025, will be taking on the Houston Half Marathon on what will be a very busy weekend for Irish endurance athletes, and later in the month, Ryan Creech will race over the same distance in Seville.
There are likely to be others taking on the half marathon too as endurance athletes sharpen up for the spring marathon season.
World Indoor Tour meetings
Andrew Coscoran set an Irish record in the 3000m at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix (World Indoor Tour Gold) in Boston last year, and he is the first Irish athlete announced for the 2026 edition, which will take place on 24th January.
There are World Indoor Tour silver meetings in Luxembourg (18 Jan), Tampere (21 Jan), Stockholm (22 Jan), Düsseldorf (24 Jan), Paris (25 Jan), Łódź (25 Jan) and Miramas (30 Jan) this month, and Irish athletes are likely to be competing at some of these.
The Irish female jumpers look set to make the most of indoor competition abroad with Saragh Buggy, Lauren Callaghan and Sommer Lecky on startlists for World Indoor Tour bronze and challenger meetings later this month.
Domestic action
Mark English is among the entrants for the 600m at the third NIA Track & Field Live meeting of the season in the NIA on Wednesday 14th January.
Strong fields are entered for the AAI Games on Saturday 17th January, particularly in the 60m. The first national champions of 2026 will be crowned at the National multi-event championships on 17th and 18th January and the National mixed 4x400m relay championships which are being held alongside the AAI Games.
The National Indoor League will get underway the following weekend, and will be followed by NIA Track & Field Live #4, and the Leinster Senior & U20 Championships before the month is out.
Other indoor action
Middle distance athletes know that if they want to record a fast time indoors, then the track at Boston University is the place to go. A number of Irish athletes will train at altitude in Flagstaff before hitting the boards alongside some of the US-based collegiate athletes at the John Thomas Terrier Classic at the end of the month.
A number of other college meetings will see Irish student-athletes chasing performances to qualify them for the NCAA indoor championships in March.
Irish Pole Vault champion Clodagh Walsh, and heptathlete Anna McCauley, who has already secured the Northern Ireland consideration standard for the Commonwealth Games, are among the Irish athletes currently appearing on startlists for events in the UK across the month.
The World Indoor Championships will take place in Poland in March, and with qualification only opening in November, no Irish athlete has, at the time of writing, achieved a consideration standard. Expect that to change dramatically as the month progresses. We’ll bring you all the qualification moments, national records, and other significant performances as they happen.
