Taghmon AC Open Cross Country, Taghmon, 16-Sep-2018

Well done to all the Juvenile and Senior Striders who participated in Taghmon’s excellent cross country event. Despite the overnight rain, the surface was sound and the course was quite testing, featuring lots of uphill sections. Juvenile training has only resumed recently, but the young Striders were in great form, in this first cross country event of the season. TJ Murphy got us off to a flying start, winning his event, over 300m. Conall Delaney, Sam Dowling, Fionn MacEochaidh, Maitiu Wall, Isabella O’Connor and Cormac Delaney were all exceptional and deservedly won medals. With the distances getting longer, Ava Kehoe, running in her first cross country race and one year out of age, put in a very impressive run, over 1km, to finish in the top half of the field. Olan Delaney, over the same distance ran well to finish in a medal position. Over 1.5km, Tommasso Hickey and Luca O’Connor finished second and third respectively. After an incredible summer, winning county, provincial and national medals at race walking, Isabel Bawden put in a very fine effort and also finished in the medals. At U16 ‘s there were fine performances from Ben and Robert Wall, Adam O’Connor and Oisin MacEochaidh. In the Junior events, Ryan Kielthy and Rebecca Bawden finished first and second in their events. In the Masters events, Beth O’Connor and George Delaney won their respective races, with George closely followed by a strong Striders contingent including Alan O’Connor​​, Pat O’Callaghan, Fabian Flood​​, Martin Kehoe​​,  and Emmett​ Malone​. Aedan Rogers posted the performance of the day, winning the Men’s Senior event in real style.At the end of a great day of competitive racing, courtesy of the host club, Taghmon AC, the Striders finished second behind an excellent DMP squad, in the best club shield competition. Well done to all who competed and cheered on today.