THE final event in this year's North Ayrshire Schools Cross Country League was held on Saturday at Irvine Beach Park and it brought to a close a fantastic run of success for Merideth Reid of St John's Primary in Stevenston.

An enthusiastic team from KA Leisure organise four of these events every year to give pupils from the North Ayrshire primary and secondary schools an opportunity to try competitive cross country races.

Merideth first participated in the events when she was in Primary Five and was first finisher in all four P5 girls races.

She repeated the feat in P6 and in her final primary year before moving on to secondary, Merideth (11) completed a remarkable clean sweep by winning all of the P7 races with the last one being at the weekend.

Merideth has collected a gold medal for all 12 wins plus an extra gold medal each year for being the series winner.

The talented Stevenston runner now trains at Irvine Running Club and any other young runners (over nine years of age ) who would like to improve their running are welcome at the coaching sessions held at Irvine Sports Club on Tuesdays, from 7pm until 8pm.

The improved weather since the start of March has encouraged huge numbers of runners to test out the fitness which they have been developing over the the winter months and get racing.

Irvine Running Club had only three runners in a healthy field of 386 at the Balloch to Clydebank half marathon on Sunday March 13 but they gave good account of themselves.

David Millar defied his 46 years and his recent achilles injury to take second place in a quality field with a remarkable time of 1h11m56s.

Mark Livingstone and Paul Lafferty can also be pleased with their performances as they finished in 1.22.01 and 1.26.43 respectively to take 45th and 80th places.

On Sunday the club had five runners in the hugely popular Alloa half marathon which had an incredible 2300 finishers.

Best for Irvine was the onsistent Paul Lafferty who recorded a personal best of 1.21.53m, only 24 hours after he improved his personal best at the Eglinton Parkrun to 18.29.

Alan Douglas also doubled up at Eglinton and Alloa and still managed a solid 1.28.34. It was great to see three of the club ladies tackle their first half marathon of the year – well done to Karen Figgins ( 2.03.43), Sharlene McGilvray (2.10.22) and Liz Colquhoun (2.11.56).