Inverness athlete Megan Keith is set to represent Great Britain for the fourth time after her excellent showing at the British trials for the European Cross Country Championships.
Competing in Liverpool on Saturday, the 20-year-old Edinburgh University student turned the screw on her rivals three kilometres into the Sefton Park course, before she and Tokyo 2020 Olympian Jessica Warner-Judd broke away and made the race their own.
Though Keith went on to finish second overall, her first-place finish in the Under-23 age category was more than enough to secure her qualification for the European Cross Country Championships which take place in Turin in just under two weeks’ time.
Megan Keith’s fourth time representing Great Britain
As well as it being the fourth time Keith has represented Great Britain, it is also the fourth time Italy has held the European Cross Country Championships – previous versions of the competition were held in Italy in 1998, 2006, and 2016.
With no interruptions to stunt her progress this winter, Keith explained she was feeling confident heading into the weekend of competition, and was keen to take the race to her competitors once she settled into her running a few kilometres into the eight-kilometre course.
She said: “It’s not quite what I envisioned doing – I thought I would do a lot more passive sitting in the pack, but the race went out pretty slowly.
“I was sitting in as best I could and letting other people take the front, but then it got to the point when we were about three kilometres in and I just thought, ‘I’m feeling good, I want to get this moving’.
“I took it on myself to speed the race up a bit and see who came with.”
As it turned out, only Warner-Judd was capable of sticking with Keith, with the Invernesian explaining much of the hard graft done in Edinburgh and the highlands over the winter months meant she was well prepared for the battle against her English opponent in Liverpool.
“The hills are definitely not as tough as some of the hills we get in Scottish cross country,” she said.
“They’re hills that bite if you’re running them at pace, but they’re not hills that’ll break you. People might just test out who’s feeling good by pushing it a little bit, but they were pretty short, steady hills – nothing like some of the rough stuff we’re used to. But when you do them on the second lap and you’re about 6.5km into the race and it’s beginning to sting, that’s when the hills can make the difference.”
Megan Keith is no stranger to circuit
Keith is no stranger to success on the cross-country circuit, of course. She has been crowned Scottish national short course champion already this winter, and last year she became European U20 cross country champion in Ireland. Given she is now at the bottom of the Under-23 age group, however, Keith admits she is not necessarily expecting to come away with silverware – but she and her coach, Ross Cairns, will still be hoping it is another strong showing for her in a GB vest.
“I quite like to take things step by step,” she said. “Up until now, the goal was just to secure qualification – now, I can reshape the next goal.
“I think a medal is probably out of reach at this level, being the youngest in the age-group, but I just want to do as well as I can. I don’t know how to specify what that means because I don’t know what the competition is going to look like – I’m just going to race as hard as I can and see what place that gets me.”
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