Last Sunday was a harsh lesson in championship racing for Fermanagh’s Mark Hoy as he saw his hopes for a medal in the 800m at the Irish Senior Championships dashed.

All had gone smoothly for the Finn Valley runner in qualifying, finishing in the top two in his heat to secure automatic qualification. And there was no problems in the first lap of the final at the Morton Stadium, Santry, but it all started to go wrong for Mark after this.

“I was second after the first lap and I was quite happy with the way things were going but then four runners came up on my shoulder and I didn’t react quick enough to it. I got boxed in and I put my hand on a lads shoulder in front of me as I thought I was going to fall. Usually they would move out of your way but this is championship racing and he pushed me away. I got pushed one way or another for about 50 metres and I think I eventually came in about seventh,” said Hoy.

The Ulster champion and Irish University champion though is keen to learn from the incident and move on.

“It was my own fault for getting caught in that position and not being alert enough. The big thing that I’ve learnt from it is that in championship races like this runners are much more aggressive. I was the second youngest runner in the race and I will learn from this experience,” he said.

On the whole though it has been a successful season for Hoy.

“If you had said to me I would be Ulster champion and Irish Universities champion at the start of the year I would have been delighted although as the year went on your perception changes and I would have been disappointed not to have run 1.49 for the 800m. I did though take 1.77 seconds of my personal best so I can’t complain and I think I will achieve the 1.49 early next year,” he said.

Mark has one more race left this season, a 1500m and he is then taking part in a charity cycle from Malinhead to Mizenhead. After that he will have two weeks break before preparations start for the new season.

“After the cycle I will take two weeks off completely from training and then I will get back at it. The one big change I will be making is that I will be avoiding cross country as much as I can. I will do a few 5Ks but it will be more power based stuff over the winter,” he commented.