Anne Paul in cross-country action.

 Anne Paul will be conspicuous by her absence from tomorrow’s Pegasus Cross Country at the University of Ulster in Coleraine.  The City of Derry athlete has been a fixture at the meeting for almost two decades almost perennially winning the women’s race.

However, the Tobermore native feels she needs to take some more time to recover from her exertions in last month’s Dublin Marathon.

Making her debut over the classic distance, Paul managed to sneak under three hours on a day when times were badly affected by the wet and windy conditions.

“It was a great experience although I was apprehensive going into it because the longest run I had done in training was only 17 miles,” said Paul.

“I struggled a bit in the mid sections but when the sun came out at 20 miles it seemed to inspire me and I was flying all the way to the finish,” added the leisure centre manager.

Paul has had a stellar career in three sports.  She has won the Irish triathlon title on no less than eight occasions, competed on the European duathlon (running and cycling) circuit as well as being one of the leading female distance runners in the province for the past 20 years.

“I’ve decided to give up the duathlon circuit because I can’t compete any more with the professionals and I’m stopping triathlons too to concentrate solely on my running.

“But I’m going to do one Ironman triathlon probably next July before I finish,” Paul revealed.

“It was a toss up between that and the Belfast Marathon but I’ll wait now and run a marathon probably somewhere abroad in September.”

In the meantime the Portrush-based woman has her hands full with preparing Northern Ireland’s triathletes for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne next March.

“I’ve been appointed team manager for the squad for the Commonwealth Games which means I’ll be going off with them for warm weather training in Lanzarote around the middle of January for a couple of weeks.

“Then we go to Australia on the 3^rd March and we’ll be there for the full month.”

In the meantime the former NI cross country champion hopes to return to competition in the Joe Seely 10K road race in Belfast next weekend with her main target for the winter being the provincial cross country championship in February.