Avondale House near Rathdrum in the garden county hosted the Leinster Novice Championship today. Underfoot conditions were excellent on this undulating twisting 4 lap course of 1Km each.
Some 60 athletes lined up at the uphill start including Niamh, Aislinn, Claire, Sinead and Aoife. Niamh, Aislinn and Sinead were prominent in the leading group after the first lap with Claire beginning her run through the field and Aoife not too far behind. Niamh was in the leading group of three after lap two with Aislinn close at hand, Sinead had drifted back a little with Claire and Aoife continuing their progress.
Going in to the final lap the leading group was down to two with Niamh looking really good, Aislinn was dicing for third, Claire had moved into the top ten and Sinead was recovering having lost a few places with Aoife running strongly well inside the top twenty.
Niamh (14.21) entered the uphill finishing straight marginally behind but had plenty in reserve to open a seven second gap to second place, Aislinn (14.36) just lost out on an individual medal while finishing a close fourth, Claire (14.55) closed in with seventh place in her first race in over a year following injury, Sinead (14.57) battled to eight with a blistering last 300 Mts, while Aoife (15.16) came home in fourteenth place.
With a very low score of 20 points our team had 60 points to spare over Tullamore with Dunleer in third place. Aoife was non scoring on this occasion but would have been a leading scoring member on any other team. The Inter County result was not available at the time of departure but as we had the leading five Dublin athletes, another medal should be winging our way pretty soon.
Great running from the whole team and we are so proud of all of them! Next outing for the girls will be the Leinster intermediate in Adamstown, Co Wexfors on the 9th of November.
Celtic DCH 