The highlight of this weekend’s racing was the ‘Inter County Cross Country’ in Tattersalls, County Meath on Sunday, where teams from across Ireland battled it out for the prestigious Inter County title. The event was used as the selection race for the Ireland team, due to attend the European Cross Country Championships in Budapest in December 2012. The day also included several junior races as part of the All Ireland Juvenile Even Age Group Cross Country. As expected, the course was very muddy, cutting up even more as the day progressed.
North Down AC had four runners in the early age group races with Katie Moore finishing an excellent 14th out of 70 in the 4000m U18 race (incorporated into the U20 race). Katie ran 17:38 min. Charlie Quinn was 120th (17:40) and Ciaran Farren was 132nd in the 4000m U16 race in 18:10 while Corey Brown was 41st in the 6000m race in 26:00 min.
Jessica Craig did pretty well in the 8K womens race, running 36th in 35:16. She was 5th in the tough standard U23 category, giving her an outside chance of the Euro cross country team. However, in recent years Ireland have tended to take no more than the first 2 U23 athletes. There was a good run also by Rachel Gibson who was 51st in 36:45 and 10th U23.
In the 10K mens race, Francis Marsh was 68th in 38:42 and Dennis Scott 102nd in 40:51. In addition to himself and Dennis, Francis also coordinated a 7 man County Down team which came 10th overall but 3rd in the C category, so picking up bronze medals. The team included 3 athletes from East Down (Brendan Teer, Neil McCartan and Barrie Atkinson) and 2 from Newcastle AC (Brendy Donnelly and Mark Kendal). Niall Robinson was injured and unavailable