County Cross Country

Laois Senior Cross Country Championships

It's that time of year again, when my county Champs take centre stage. The past three years have turned into a battle royal with Michael, with both of us knocking lumps out of each other. I won in 09, Michael won in 10 and I won again last year, so it was highly possible that Michael would win again this year, especially given how little I've ran over the past two weeks.  

This year was the 50^th anniversary of the event, so St. Abbans, the host club, invited quite a lot of the previous winners back for the race and the after party. The course itself, was what everyone would call a real cross country course, it had plenty of hills and the ground was very muddy in places, we even had to jump through a few gaps in ditches.

The first race of the day was the Junior men's which was won by my younger brother David, he is having a great season, and it was his first Junior title to win, with another three years of eligibility I'm sure he can add to it. The second race was the Senior Ladies and that was won by my younger  sister Mary, she  has also had a great season, after competing in the Euro Juniors she  has followed that up with a great run in Celtic XC champs in Edinburgh last weekend.

It's fair to say that although both Michael and I were not at ours best we still both wanted to win on Sunday, or more importantly finish without causing any further damage. Personally I wanted to win as I've won the title 6 times in the past, it's a joint record with the legendary Colm Burke, so winning this year would have put me top of the medal table. Michael obviously wanted to win because with only one title to his name he needs to start catching up on me, something which will inevitably happen.

We had 6 laps, with each lap being a mile or so. Before the first lap was over and after the tradition of sitting in the group for the first part of the race, I went to the front, more to see the ground than anything else, over the course of the next 4 laps Michael made a few attempts to break me, as I did to him also, eventually with about 2.5km to go on an uphill stretch I went for broke and pulled away.

Once I got a little breathing room over Michael I could relax a little more. It's obviously not a huge race, but to everyone running it, and this year we had record entries in both senior races it means a lot, and it also means a lot to me, I wouldn't compete if it didn't.

Left to right: Aengus Burke, David Walsh-Kemmis, Jimmy MacCormack, Noel Marum, Dan Mulhare, Michael Mulhare

Our team Portlaoise finished 2^nd, it's the first time in 22 years that we didn't win the club title, but I'm more than happy with the eventually winners St. Abbans, as I think they deserve it this year.

Thanks for reading.