Emma eyes Euro selection after podium finish
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But along with these come many opportunities and twins Emma and Oonagh Dunnett took on one of these recently when they made the journey to Glasgow for the Scottish national 4k cross country championships.
The race, held in Bellahouston Park, is open to under-20 and senior athletes who run in a single race, although individual places are allocated by age group and team places are combined across the ages.
With Emma and Oonagh competing in this event for the first time, there was no benchmark as to how they would perform. The plan was to take the race out at a sensible pace and work through the pack in the second of two laps. On the day, they executed this with a degree of maturity beyond their racing years.
With a field of 60 senior runners, Emma and Oonagh managed to stay wide of the pack in order not to get bumped in the fast start. They made their way round the first lap, letting those who had taken the race out too hard do all the early work.
As both runners made their way to the final straight in the first lap, they started to pick off runners.
Emma, who had her sights set on a Scottish selection for the European cross country trails in Liverpool, needed to finish in the top-four under-20 runners.
She entered the second lap with six under-20s ahead of her and went about reeling them in.
With three-quarters of the lap still to run she was sitting on the tail of three of these runners and she moved past them with ease on an uphill section of the course.
As she made her way round to the final straight she passed a further under-20 runner to not only secure her selection for Liverpool but also win a bronze medal in the under-20 race, finishing 10th overall in the senior race in a time of 15.11 min.
With two other Edinburgh seniors finishing fourth and ninth, this was enough to win Edinburgh AC the silver team medal.
Oonagh also used the second lap well to pass runners who had not paced the race as well and found herself ahead of seniors who had beaten her at both the recent district and national relays.
She finished in 18th place overall, seventh under-20 in a time of 15.36 min which was an excellent result.
With all of the under-20s ahead of Oonagh, except Emma, being in their final year of the age group, Emma and Oonagh are well placed to enjoy their time in this age group.
The girls next make their way to Liverpool this weekend to compete in the McCain UK Challenge which acts as the European cross-country championships selection race.
They are joined by another local, Andrew Douglas, who will be competing for Inverclyde AC.
