Amie Giles and Arlene Coughlan used the Juvenile relays as a warm-up for the Junior women’s 3,000m where Amie kept in touch with the leading group for a long time and showed great strength and resolve to finish 7th with Arlene not far behind in 14th despite having to cope with a bad stitch in the closing stages. These girls are underage for quite a few years yet, so we haven’t seen the best from them by a long measure.

With a team of Lee Stenson, Shane Boggs, Jake Byrne and Warren Walsh in the Junior men’s 6,000, Mullingar had to be taken seriously. As the 4 lap race unfolded, Lee kept to the front and swapped the lead several times and going into the last lap it was not clear how it would finish. With about 1km to go, Lee was forced to drop back slightly but never gave up trying to win and battled to the finish where he took 2nd place. Shane had a great race meanwhile and was rewarded with a well deserved 3rd place finish, with Jake finishing strongly in 7th to put the team in serious medal contention. A team is only as good as the fourth man, and luckily Warren was in good form and having a good race and finished strongly to secure the silver medals for 2nd Club. As a measure of the competition, there was only one point between gold and silver and one point between silver and bronze, proving how vital every place counts.