Two kilometres left. This is it, now or never. Go with him. This is the move, damn it, stick with him. My eyes narrow and focus on his left shoulder. His grey singlet ripples as he leads into the wind.

A chunk of Dungarvan mud is nestled on his shoulder blade, flicked upwards from his spikes in the torrid conditions. He angrily puffs a stream of air from his mouth, emerging like white smoke in the icy November air.

One kilometre left, and as we charge alone into the quietest part of the course, we hear nothing but each other's footsteps. Just us, two teenagers gasping for oxygen as they try to hang on for three more agonising minutes. I feel like agreeing a truce while we're out here, 50-50, we'll split the gold medal. Such thoughts don't reside long in the mind. They are quickly replaced by more animal instincts. You or him, Cathal. You choose. Are you going to let him beat you?

This is your last junior year.

Last chance. Take him out.

Eight hundred metres separate one of us from our first national cross-country title.

We have returned to the noisiest part of the course, and as we swing a right-hand turn through the crowds, he lifts the pace again. Impossible.

He lengthens his stride, pumps his arms backwards like pistons, and that grey singlet begins to move into the distance. Let him go. You can't match that. Too much pain. Not today.

When an athlete gets injured, it's akin to amputating a chair's leg and expecting it to stand. The leg which supports them, defines them, disappears.

They have no option but to accept their fall to the floor, try not to hit their head on landing. When that athlete's chosen sport is one which requires obsession and insanity in equal doses, the fall is that much harder. Few know the loneliness of the injured long-distance runner.

I tore my hamstring in 2004. However, it wasn't one of those tears you read about in papers. The ones where some player tears a hammy, goes to some treatment centre at minus 500 degrees, and then miraculously emerges the following weekend with an inspirational performance.

No, this was a sinister, evil, chronic rip in the top of my right hamstring. Evil enough to require five physiotherapists and three doctors to diagnose. Evil enough to prevent me sitting in the same position for more then ten minutes. Evil enough to sentence me to the couch for six months.

Long-distance runners endure daily. We deny ourselves the comfort zone because we know the rush we get when the pain barrier is broken. That euphoric daze after a track session when your eyes cannot focus, your head pounds, and your muscles burn in a sea of lactic acid. All you want is to lie down and die. But you don't.

You run on, knowing that after this insane effort, the organism that is your body becomes stronger. So when I felt a niggle in my right buttock in 2004, I ran on.

There is a Cherokee saying:

'Listen to the whispers, and you won't have to hear the screams.' If only. Four months after I heard the whispers, I was screaming. It was on the treatment table at Gerard Hartmann's clinic in Limerick city. He plunged his thumbs into my hamstring, pressing in further until I couldn't take any more. I covered my face with my hands and asked him for a towel I could bite on as he tried to heal me. Back and forth, across the hamstring, minute after minute after minute. Worse than any race, worse than when I broke my collarbone. Tears rolled down my cheek, not out of some emotional decision to cry, but simply because I was writhing in agony.

'Now you're finding out, Cathal, what they go through, ' he said. 'Not nice, is it? Not nice at all.'

After this came four months of rest. It may sound appealing to the average armchair athlete, but to me the words resounded like a temporary death sentence.

I did core exercises every day to strengthen the muscles supporting the hamstring. But nothing could support me. For four months, each day lacked purpose.

Then there were the comments. 'If you were a horse, you'd have been put down by now.' 'You've got lazy.' 'Why are you so depressed? Cheer up for God sake.'

Very few truly cared. Even fewer understood. I'd lie on the couch, turning from side to side, looking at my watch, hoping enough time had passed in the day to justify going back to bed. Nil Desperandum. Never despair. I despaired.

The first run I was allowed was a humiliating 12-minute hobble. I covered less than a mile and a half. My chest was tight, lungs panting, and my knees ached with the impact.

My body had forgotten how to run. As I slowed to a walk after 12 minutes, sweat streaming relentlessly down my forehead, I added to the flow with a few tears. I finally knew why running was a minority sport. Gone was the feeling of effortless cruise, replaced with a painful, uncoordinated stagger. I gave up hope of ever competing at national level again. There I was, sweating profusely after a run more suited to an overweight smoker on New Year's Day.

In running, the consensus is that it takes two days of training to make up for every one day missed. A quick calculation meant it would take me a year of training to match my previous self. A year. Fifty two weeks of cold mornings and brutal sessions. Sixty miles a week. Every week.

That should teach my body how to run again.

Four hundred metres remaining. Somehow, I have regained contact with him.

There is a theory in horse racing that you come wide when challenging a battling horse. Take Brave Inca. You don't look that horse in the eye as you go past, you sneak by on the outside, hoping he won't notice.

The sight of Brendan O'Neill's grey singlet turning the screw for the last 15 minutes has told me he's a battler.

Go wide. I launch myself through the mud. Though my arms burn with the effort, I pump them vigorously, hoping my legs will follow suit. I drop my mouth open and try to suck in some precious air.

I think of the time spent alone in my room, icing my hamstring and doing endless rehab exercises. Thoughts of the screaming on Gerard Hartmann's table return. I attack with fury. Though this final burst is torture on my weary body, one thought resonates in my mind: 'I've had worse.'

Through the finishing chute, first. National junior cross-country champion. My mother sprints over and hugs me, one of the few who cared and understood.

No celebration. No pumping fists or victorious salutes.

Just a satisfied grin to be somewhere I never thought possible 15 months ago. A drop of sweat rolls down my cheek, no doubt wondering where its accomplice was.

Only minutes later, as the gold medal was draped around my neck, would a solitary tear make the familiar journey.