Junior Inter Regional Championships Roundup

Over the weekend 27/28 Sep 14 a team of 11 NI juniors travelled to take part in the Junior Inter Regional Championships in Cumbria, England. Two adults, Alan Elwood and Steph Pruzina, accompanied the team. One member of the LVO squad, Rachel Collins, was unable to attend due to breaking her arm the night before departure. She was greatly missed, as she has been a stalwart of the LVO Junior Development Squad and is a talented athlete.  It also meant there was no NI female relay team, although the remaining females got to run in an ad hoc team.

The team met up at the ferry on Friday evening and travelled down to Finsthwaite where we stayed in a church hall.  The floor was a bit hard for some of us, who had thin roll mats, but luckily Steph had a blow up mattress and Alan a camp cot so they were fine. This was only but fair, as they had been forced to endure horrendous singing for nearly 5 hours on the trip down!  The next day, Saturday, got off to a bright start. After a brisk forest walk the team headed to the venue at Graythwaite Hall for the first races. This was very technical and physically demanding terrain with a mix of hill, open forest, thicker forest, marsh and crags. It was also a warm and sunny day making the running thirsty work. The team found it tough going on these races but to the credit of individuals the majority completed their courses with top placed finisher being Paul Pruzina who came 13^th in his race.

The second day saw us move to an area of open and complex sand dunes, known as Roanhead, to take part in the relay races. The weather was overcast but warm making it ideal for racing and watching alike.  Each relay team had a M/W16 who ran first followed by a M/W 14 and then finally a M/W18. The girls formed an ad hoc team with a girl from West Midlands who was also called Rachel and who had also broken her arm a while back and still had the support on. Spooky!! Once more it was tough racing for many of our team as they coped with the complex and confusing mapping of the dunes. Our top boys team of James Millar, Andrew Elwood and Paul Pruzina did very well coming a respectable 9^th out of 34 teams. Thankfully for Alan’s nerves the drive back was much quieter as everyone fell asleep for much of the journey. 

The NI JIRCs team included:

·      Paul Pruzina

·      Eoghan Knight

·      Andrew Elwood

·      Peter Reed

·      Conor McGuinness

·      Peter Meehan

·      Peter McClure

·      Gill Stephens

·      Frazer Howe

·      James Millar

·      Sophie Pruzina