ATHLETICS/National Championships: Irish distance running has a strange way of surviving. You think times are lean or the system has failed again and then suddenly the sort of performance comes that says the great tradition is not dead yet. Ian O'Riordan talks to the new great hope of Irish men's distance running, Cathal Lombard.

And there is still no predicting the moment, or the source. Like when Eamonn Coghlan and John Treacy were followed by Frank O'Mara and Marcus O'Sullivan. Or when the women's future looked so bleak and out of a quiet place in Cork came a 17-year-old Sonia O'Sullivan to win the national senior cross-country.

There was a concern for a while this year about men's distance running, particularly the 5,000 metres. Mark Carroll had single-handedly taken the Irish record close to 13 minutes, but is now concentrating on the marathon. South African-born Alistair Cragg, who through his Irish roots switched allegiance two years ago, has the potential to match that record but his focus is still on collegiate running in America.

Then a result came through from a Grand Prix meeting in Belgium last Saturday night, and now the name Cathal Lombard is the first topic of conversation in Irish athletics. Aged 27 and with no national titles to claim, nor indeed much of a reputation, he ran 13 minutes, 19.22 seconds. He took fifth, with maybe a dozen leading athletes behind him.

It sounds fast, but just how fast? Enough to say only six Irish men have ever run the distance faster. To become the first Irish male athlete this season to secure the A-standard qualifying time for the World Championships in Paris, and better still for next year's Athens Olympics - in any sport. Enough to say the future of Irish distance running has just been made secure again.

So for much of last week Cathal Lombard was being asked to tell his story. It was not complicated. As a youngster in Midleton his talent for running brought much encouragement but little success. In fact younger brother Fiachra seemed more talented. Perseverance was what would really count, during his time as a student in UCC through to him moving to work in Dublin and across the frustrating plateaus of more recent years.

And with the winter of 2001 came the lowest point. Then a solicitor working in Dublin, Lombard felt he'd floored his training to the limit, that perhaps the breakthrough would never come. He was reduced to a couple of runs a week around Belfield, contemplating not so much would he retire, but when.

A chance meeting with Gerry McGrath on one of those runs was the turning point. A great supporter of Irish athletics and himself a former marathon champion, McGrath suggested a new direction, some fresh motivation, and he knew the man who could provide it: Joe Doonan.

"Without a doubt Joe has been the sole reason behind the breakthroughs I've made this year," says Lombard. "Towards the end of 2001 I'd been training very hard, trying to give it a real go. But the only way I knew how to train was to train hard, all the time. And I ended up running myself into the ground."

But while working with Doonan might have sounded like a good idea, there was no guarantee Doonan wanted to work with him. A reclusive and mythical sort of coach, Doonan had helped take Catherina McKiernan from obscurity to the top of women's distance running, developing the sort of intense coaching relationship that is still a rare model in the sport.

"Of course I wasn't sure if Joe would work with me, and he hadn't been working with anyone since Catherina. And he's also a hard man to contact. He doesn't answer the phone very often. Gerry was trying to get him for a few weeks and eventually he got him on Christmas Eve. Maybe because of the day that was in it, he agreed to at least talk."

So early last year Lombard took a trip to Doonan's home in Carrigallen, just off the Cavan-Leitrim border. They talked it through for a couple of days and in the end Doonan had found a new student.

"Essentially he told me I wasn't doing the right things, and the training I was doing he wouldn't give to any other athlete in the world. It was just too hard for someone who was working full time, trying to look after everything, and living in rented accommodation."

So the plan was to cut the miles Lombard was running by 40 per cent, and focus more on speed drills and gym work, the sort of training known technically as plyometrics. Diet and nutrition would receive much greater attention. And between his work hours in Dublin the commitment would have to be total.

"I remember when I started doing those speed drills and bounding exercises in Belfield there would be groups of runners going past, and sniggering. Like look at your man, what the hell is he doing. Well I'd say they're regretting that now. And I believe now that a lot of Irish athletes are not training right."

Lombard gradually got used to the Doonan method, and then the breakthroughs started. He took second behind fellow Cork and Leevale athlete Martin McCarthy at the National Cross Country championships in March, and then in early July ran 28:05.27 for 10,000 metres - the fastest time by an Irishman since Mark Carroll's record of 27:46.82 set three years previously.

Tomorrow in Santry he'll concentrate on the 5,000 metres, and bid for his first national senior title. But in Paris he'll run the 10,000 metres, hoping to challenge for Carroll's record.

"I feel I've taken my 5,000-metre time as far as I can for this season. I mean I hurt very badly over the last three laps of that race in Belgium, knowing there was so much at stake. But there is still more there for the 10,000. If the pace is right in Paris and it's not too hot I can go under 28 minutes, and hopefully get close to the record."

It means too that Lombard lines up alongside the great Ethiopians Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele. But don't expect any hero worship: "To be honest my inspiration in the sport would be someone like Noel Berkeley, who has achieved an awful lot for himself.

"Running for me is about personal fulfilment. And I do get great satisfaction out of running well. And it's about also testing yourself. All the great athletes have the ability to hurt themselves very badly to get the best out of themselves. That's something I'm still learning to do."

Lombard has come this far solely through his love for running, and without a cent of support from the Irish Sports Council or a proper sponsor. He still won't ask for time off work. He says he's been only out twice for a beer this year and you get the feeling he didn't finish one of them. It's the sort of story Irish athletics is still taking for granted, but what keeps the whole thing alive.