A WEEKLY diet of 150 miles yielded its due reward as John Downes regained the national senior cross country title at Santry yesterday.

It was a fascinating contest with Downes only emerging in the final 1,000 metres after using his not inconsiderable strength to stretch away and come home with three seconds to spare on Noel Cullen. But if Cullen had realised that Downes legs had actually buckled when he put in that gut wrenching burst 1,000 metres, the Clonliffe man would surely not have allowed the gap of 20 metres to open. And while he did close the winner down in the home straight with the victory margin a mere three seconds, it was never enough.

Cullen can take a large amount of credit for the way the race unfolded. "I decided to make it a true run race by pushing hard early on to stretch out the field and it seemed to work." he said.

Only those with serious intentions of garnering the main prize on the domestic scene remained in contention after the opening of six laps. Downes and Cormac Finnerty together with the Mullingar brothers David and John Burke, Seamus Power and Noel Berkeley were among those to survive Cullen's early surge which led to a lead of 60 metres.

On the second lap Cullen was reeled in and by that stage the group was down to five - Downes, Cullen, David Burke, Finnerty and Power - as the psychological battle began in earnest. Cullen appeared to be the master, firstly with his early unusual tactic and then at the midway point when he again put in a surge which ended the challenge of first Power and then the defending champion Burke but Downes and Finnerty had other thoughts.

The latter part of the race saw the three leaders interchange at the front without anyone ever gaining any significant advantage until Finnerty, who was breathing harder that the other two, lost two metres with 1.500 metres to race.

Gerry Curtis defied the years as his strong forceful running brought him through to fourth place while David Burke showed the effects of little racing over the last few weeks with his fifth place. Behind him Seamus Power who has more injury than training in the last six months again displayed his grit and determination. At one stage he looked as if he might be easing out of the top 12 but he clawed his back to an excellent sixth placing.

Mullingar with their four scorers in the top twelve easily retained their team title ahead of Clonliffe with Civil Service third.

In the women's race the front running tactics yielded a third successive title for Teresa Duffy when having disposed of the challenge of Ann Keenan-Buckley by the end of 2,000 metres, she strode on to victory with 30 seconds to spare. Maureen Harrington finished third. After a lap the margin was 15 metres and at that early stage Keenan-Buckley was facing the prospect of collecting her sixth silver medal in these championships and that is exactly how the race panned out as Duffy running better than ever in her career gave herself the ideal send-off for next weeks European indoor championship in Stockholm.

There was also no denying the merit of Keith Kelly's margin of victory in the junior race as his pre-race plan of moving to the front early and running hard all the way had the desired effect on the remainder of the field. Limerick's Tom Carey battled his way to silver with Gary Hynes moving through for third with Leevale taking the team award for the seventh successive time.

Cork's Valerie Lynch was locked in battle for the junior women's title with defending champion Siobhain Walshe and as in the main event it was only in the final 1,000 metres that Lynch managed to dispose of the challenger to come home with 11 seconds to spare on Walshe while Olga Cronin led East Cork to the team award.,

Sonia O Sullivan, currently training in Australia, has notified BLE that she does not wish to be considered for the team to travel to South Africa later this month to contest the World Cross Country Championships. She was injured shortly before Christmas which curtailed her training.

O'Sullivan has only made one appearance in this race in Boston four years ago where she finished seventh, the day Catherina McKiernan took the first of her four silver medals in the event.