Team prize c

DROGHEDA & District AC narrowly missed out on individual gold but were worthy winners of the team prize at Sunday’s Louth Masters Cross-Country Championships in Togher.

Run over an unusually dry but nevertheless testing course, this year’s races attracted a large number of athletes and in the Ladies 3k Pamela Howard really put it up to the in-form Karen Costello from Dunleer AC.

Going out on the last lap, Howard surged ahead and pushed hard in her attempt to open up a gap on her opponent, but Costello, who is very strong at the moment, chased her down and broke away over the hilly stretch at the back of the course to come home a worthy winner.

Not far behind, the strong-running Ciara O’Reilly was having to work hard to hold onto fourth place as Yasmin Canning was closing quickly coming into the last field and the home straight.

O’Reilly hung on for fourth by a mere two seconds, and with Canning in fifth and Nuala O’Reilly in 10th place, D&D duly picked up the team prize.

Category prize winners in the Women’s Over-35 were Howard (1st) and in the Women’s Over-40 O’Reilly (2nd) and Canning (3rd).

In the Ladies 45 race Barbara Byrne ran well to finish third, while Mary McDonnell won the W55 race and Deirdre McFerran came third.

Nuala Reilly won the W60 race, with Margaret McAuley second and Margo Duffy third, picking up the team prize for their efforts.

In the Men’s 5k race, run over four laps of this testing course, Brian McCloskey raced away from the field right from the start and came home an easy winner, with