Ras na hEireann 2016
Nine Lusk AC athletes travelled to Drogheda for the Ras na hEireann today. While it was cold, the weather remained dry and conditions under foot were perfect compared to Raheny a few weeks back.
We had Adam McNally as the sole juvenile racer who used the event as a training session when he realised the massive cross country talent that took part in his race. He had next week’s indoors in mind.
Laura Robinson and Annette Foy made up the Ladies Team. Annette loved the conditions and ran extremely well among the main field. Laura was placed 11th going on to the last lap but in the high field with 800m to go she made her move and narrowly missed out on 5th place at the finish. But when results were processed it emerged that she was the winner of the Masters event. This is the first gold for Laura in a few years.
Next up was the men’s race with Sean Greensit, Richard Foy, Liam Halpin, Eamon Caffrey, Darren Ryan and Colm Mc Nally going to the start.
Colm twisted himself at the start and only managed 10m of the 4 lap race before stopping.
Meanwhile, Darren Ryan quickly found himself in a race for silver after the leader cleared off into the distance. Darren made all the running with the Dunleer athlete tracking him all the way. He had a 10m lead going onto the last lap which closed to 2m with 600m left to run. But Darren was only teasing his opponent and sprinted away to win by 20m at the finish. It was a very impressive run by the Lusk man who goes with the Dublin Team to the Inter Counties Cross Country Championships next Sunday in Galway.
Meanwhile in the middle of the field Sean was the pace setter followed closely by Richard and Eamon. Liam was a bit further back running strongly after recovering from injury. However, Richard who has improved greatly this year made his move going onto the last lap to lead home the rest of the Lusk team followed closely behind by Sean and Eamon and Liam.