Forest Park, Boyle played host to the National Juvenile B Cross Country Championships at the weekend where Craughwell AC had a small group of athletes taking part.  

Dearbhaile Walshe had an outstanding run in the U13 Girls race to take the gold medal. Getting out fast at the start, Dearbhaile was always in the hunt for a medal and led the race from an early stage. With about 200m to go, she started to pull away and opened up a 30m gap at the front to win in style!

Her team-mates Aoife Greene, Ciara O'Boyle and Erin Fitzpatrick also had a super run with Erin 35th, Ciara 57th and Aoife 62nd, This yield a team score of 155 points and when the team results were announced later, the Craughwell team finished in the heart-breaking position of 4th – losing out on team bronze by a mere 2 points.

In the U17 Girls race, Ciara Greene had a fine run to take 5th place despite being out of her age. The day was wrapped up by strong performances in the inter-county cross country relays which saw the Galway team take bronze in the U14 Boys 4x500m, with Oisin Doyle and Matthew Barrett putting in strong performances in the Galway colours, while Gráinne McDaid helped the Galway U14 Girls team take 4th place in their 4x500m

I cannot conclude this article without commenting on the remarkable performance of Peter O'Sullivan in the National Masters Cross Country which was also held in Boyle. Peter came in a fantastic 3rd place, beating many notable runners in the process. If there was an event in the Olympics for the most improved distance runner in the last 4 years, Peter would stroll to victory. Its not all that long ago since he joined the club and started off his get-fit programme with the weekly circuit training sessions on Monday nights. And even I was faster then him then – but sadly the s in faster has been replaced with a t since then. So well done Peter, that was an inspirational performance.