Interclub Bronze caps off an historic Senior year on the country
2011/2012 was a strange cross country season for the Senior team. There were some great individual performances from Gerry in the Summer and Peter in 2011, but a large portion of the Senior team were thrown back by injury or life events through the year, meaning we had a depleted squad when it came to competitions. We have a very small panel of athletes that compete and it wasn't easy to cope with the loss of people like Gerry, Jason, myself, Johnny, etc for most of the season. Strangely though, it ended up being the best year on record for the club in cross country, even if we did have to field the same four lads in all competitions..
We started out by winning the Galway Cross Country, defending our title from last year in a tough battle. There was a bit of history here too as Peter put on a powerhouse display to win the Senior individual Galway cross country – the first time a Craughwell AC athlete has done so. It looked unlikely that we were going to get a team together for the Connaught Cross country, coming as it did a week after Dublin Marathon but somehow Paul heroically shook off his 26.2 mile race and lined up for us in Sligo to help us to Connacht gold in another very close contest.
Last Sunday we made history by competing for the first time in the National Interclub cross country. It was held over 12k of the nicest running surface I've ever seen in Cross Country. In fact the first thing I did was unscrew my spikes. Peter was first home in 34th followed by myself in 59th, Martin in 60th and Paul in 73rd. They don't seem like very high positions but there are a lot of very good runners in the race, so we had to run pretty hard! The result was enough to see us get a Category C bronze. Actually it was enough to get a Category B bronze, but we chose the Category C bronze as we were only 2 points off Silver and we want to make a stab at winning category C next year. 🙂 Congratulations to Ennis Track who fielded a super-strong team and took Category C Gold.
The next club target is the National 10k in Phoenix Park. The squad is looking a bit healthier for this year as Jason also surprised himself (and us) last weekend by running a very impressive 34:27 in the Adare 10k and we have a "brat pack" of older Juvenilles that are really flying.
Team results for the first 17 teams are below:
Place Team Total
1 Clonliffe Harriers A.C. (A) 25 2 3 4 16
2 Raheny Shamrock A.C. (A) 45 5 6 13 21
3 Dundrum South Dublin A.C. (A) 78 10 12 27 29
4 Ennis Track A.C. (C) 159 24 32 39 64
5 Ferrybank A.C. (B) 183 22 33 42 86
6 Tullamore Harriers A.C. (B) 221 45 47 63 66
7 Sliabh Bhuide Rovers A.C. (C) 224 31 48 50 95
8 Donore Harriers A.C. (A) 225 25 53 67 80
9 Craughwell A.C. (C) 226 34 59 60 73
10 Sportsworld A.C. (A) 241 43 55 65 78
11 Togher A.C. (C) 247 44 51 52 100
12 Tallaght A.C. (C) 251 7 68 77 99
13 Clonliffe Harriers A.C. 'B' (A) 292 49 58 79 106
14 Liffey Valley A.C. (B) 303 57 71 87 88
15 Drogheda & District A.C. (C) 318 40 83 85 110
16 Galway City Harriers A.C. (A) 325 56 82 90 97
17 Inishowen A.C. (C) 378 72 98 101 107
Full results here.
http://www.athleticsireland.ie/content/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/senior-men-inter-club.doc