Ruairi McGonagle: Heathside's teen wonder

Ruairi McGonagle this year established himself as the brightest star in the Heathside firmament. Over the past month the 13-year-old has added to his Met League and Middlesex triumphs by winning the Northwest Young Athletes cross country league, picking up 14th place in the National Cross Country championships and coming first for his county, and 24th overall, in the national Inter-Counties Cross Country Champs. He speaks to Gavin Evans about running for Heathside. 

Ruairi McGonagle first realised he might just have some talent for running as a six-year-old. His father, Paul, and mother Therese, entered him for the children’s one-mile race in the Crouch End 10k event, and took him on a few training runs. He won the race and caught the bug.

Soon he was running for his school, and at the age of nine he joined Heathside. His first coach was Rachel Weston. “We ran, but not long distances, and also did things like high jump and pole vault, which was a lot of fun,” he recalls. “I really enjoyed it.”  

By the age of 11 it was clear that he had the talent to move up to Kabir Kemp’s group, most of them teenagers. The baby of his family (he has an older sister at university) was also the youngest in the group but he found the more intense training and higher level of competition to be an exhilarating challenge, making him ever-more eager to push himself. “Kabir gets us to train regularly on the hills,” he says, “which means in cross-country races I can overtake others uphill.”

On those gruelling training runs the 13-year-old keeps his sights on the club’s two star 16-year-olds, Liam Garrett and Jem O’Flaherty. “I try to stay as close as I can to them,” he says, “and sometimes I can just about keep up.”

 Ruairi says he loves the competitive element of running, but adds that the camaraderie is what he relishes the most. “I just love watching the other Heathsiders racing and cheering them on,” he says. “We all support each other, and we’re friends outside of running too, and we all get on really well with Kabir.”

His typical training week includes a hill session in Finsbury Park on a Tuesday, a track session followed by a core session in the gym on a Thursday and a long run down Parkland Walk and around Highgate Wood (sometimes more than 10k) on a Sunday.

The year 8 pupil at St Ignatius College in Enfield represents his school in football and rugby, as well as in running. This week he was due to run in the English Schools championships but a minor operation to remove a birth mark scuppered that plan.

Aside from his high level of fitness, he feels his best asset is his sprint finish (he can break 14 seconds for the 100m and often plays on the wing at rugby). “I always seem to finish strongly and sometimes overtake people in the dash to the line.”

Ruairi says that despite all his victories this year, he is most proud of his run in the National Cross Country Championships in Nottingham in February. Up against the best 13-year-olds in Britain, he came 14thin a field of 458, less than a minute behind the winner.

“I was also very pleased with my run in the Middlesex Champs,” he says, referring to one of his eye-catching 2017 victories. “I was in the lead but the Hillingdon runner kept on trying to overtake me and in the end it was a race to the line and I won by one second.”

This season he will be running in his first of two years as an under 15 in track, and says his goals include breaking 2:13 in the 800 m and getting under 4:40 in the 1500. “That would put me in the top 50 nationally, but I’ll have another year as an under-15 to improve further.”

Ruairi predicts that the 800 meters will turn out to be his best event. But whatever distance he chooses, he makes it clear that running is not just a youthful obsession. “I hope to be a long-term runner,” he says. “I see myself continuing with it for many years to come.”