This year’s Autumn Cross Country Festival found a new home in the newly purpose built, state of the art cross country course just up the road from us in Abbotstown. This new course is certainly one of Europe’s top venues for Cross Country. On site wifi connections make this a media and spectator friendly venue.

This was the first Cross Country event to be held in this venue. The quality of runners certainly graced the occasion and the new facility. The pre-registered program list of athletes also added to the already mouth-watering event in prospect.

The opening of the high quality facility and prize money up for grabs attracted all the “Big Guns” both nationally and internationally.

The races also doubled as the qualifiers for the home nations masters cross country championships, our only qualifier for master’s international competition, and as usual Dunboyne AC had more than a passing interest.

The course itself is fantastic, consisting of all the ingredients that make a great cross country course. The runner experiences all types of terrain from flat golf course like greens, challenging uphill’s, sandy soft patches through some wooded areas, long straights, along with quick twists and turns. It has it all…

The event started with the Dublin Juveniles testing out the course. The main event was broken into Male and Female start times. Each age group, junior, senior and masters ran different distances within each race. By the time the senior and master’s men and women took to the start line, the course was certainly broken in and made it even more challenging for the athletes.

The senior and masters women’s race was predictably enough won by Fionnuala Britton. Our interest in this race was represented by Eimear English, who has been in great form on grass in Meath championships, and so she was on Sunday too. Spurred on by a shout out from Captain Emilia Eimear put the boot down with 300 meters to go and passed the entire group she’d been trailing to finish ahead of them all. A  spectacular finish to her race according to spectators! Eimear finished this tough 6k course in 59th place in a time of 25:33.

In the men’s senior and master’s race, Phelim Glynn led by example for the Club. Phelim was looking to follow up on last year’s international selection at the home nations XC with a performance this year in the top 3 of his category. He was involved in a race within a race, and he delivered, ensuring another green vest in Autumn with 3rd in his category, in a time of 28:59 over the 8k distance.

Next in for Dunboyne was Paddy Peters. With triathlon season over it was time to ditch the arm warmers, leg warmers, lycra, Garmin and Oakley’s and get stuck into some real action. Paddy had a super run, 30:03 for the 8k distance. We look forward to more from him in a blue and white vest for the rest of the winter.

Keith Eglington paced the unfamiliar distance well and was very happy to finish strongly in a time of 33:40. Warren McIntyre made up the Dunboyne quartet in action in this race, getting back into action after a stop start year. It wasn’t a race for the faint hearted, and Warren didn’t shy away from it. He ran an excellent 34:30. Both are now looking forward to a relatively easy 6K distance at the Leinster Novice on the 29th of the month.

Well done everyone, especially Phelim, we’re very proud Coach!