Having confirmed her participation in Saturday's IAAF Grand Challenge around the grounds at Stormont Castle, Belfast, Catherina McKiernan has been included in an Irish A team, along with Ann Keenan Buckley and Rosemary Ryan. It will be only McKiernan's second race in an Irish singlet since the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996.

The impressive line-up for the race, the first international event organised by the Irish Athletics Association in conjunction with the athletics governing body in Northern Ireland, also includes Britain's Paula Radcliffe, who last year won the bronze medal in the World Cross Country Championships staged in Belfast.

European Championship silver medallist Constantine Dita of Romania is another starter, as is Ethiopia's Ayelech Worku, who finished one place behind Radcliffe in last year.

McKiernan, who will be the biggest attraction in the event, has been running well over the last few months having finally overcome a series of niggling injuries which have prevented her from training as hard as she would have liked.

"I always say that a day is a long time in this game, but yes, my training has been going well and hopefully that will continue," she said yesterday. "I've been able to do most things and I'm looking forward to running the race in Belfast.

"I've missed the cross country and I'm looking forward to getting back into it. I ran a race in Brussels in the week just before Christmas and after that I said to myself that I wanted to race again. The conditions in Brussels were tough, very hilly and twisty and a lot of mud. But I was happy with fifth place. It has been a long time since I ran in those sort of conditions."

The threat of Radcliffe and the other elite athletes does not, however, intimidate McKiernan, who is using the event to judge her progress thus far. She is scheduled to run in an IAAF Grand Prix Challenge event in Durham on January 22nd.

"I'm looking forward to the opposition and to the atmosphere in Stormont. I never fear them. At this stage I should be able to get the injuries out of my head. Although they were minor, I suppose they did stop me from training the way I wanted to train and that has been on my mind.

"I think after a few races that fear will go. Because the training has gone well for me over the last few weeks I feel stronger. Obviously if I can continue to train like that I'll get even stronger. When I was younger Joe (Doonan, her coach) could throw any training at me and I could handle it. Now that I'm just that bit older, I have to be a little more careful," she said.

"I'll look on the race to see how I'm feeling before running later this month. It's a good opportunity to get out there and hopefully give the crowd something to cheer about."

Seamus Power, Martin McCarthy and Peter Matthews will make up the men's team.