Jay Donawa may be the “old man” in Bermuda’s team for next month’s Nacac Cross Country Championships in Trinidad & Tobago, but he insists that he will not be there to make up the numbers.

The veteran runner will join Trey Simons, Lamont Marshall and teenager Juma Mouchette in the Bermuda team for the race on February 22 and intends to play his part in helping them to be competitive against countries such as the United States, Canada, Jamaica and the host country.

“I’m just hoping the four of us can maintain our health over the next three weeks,” Donawa said. “The US, Canada, Jamaica are the major teams, along with Mexico if they send a full team. Over the last few years they have sent just one or two runners in each category.

One year, in St Lucia in 1999, they only sent three runners and still dominated the team event as their coach also ran. That was the year I broke my collarbone near the Arboretum when competing in the 10K during Race Weekend. I still went to St Lucia a few weeks later as I already had my ticket, even though I didn’t compete.”

Donawa, 41, retains an appetite for cross-country running and regularly goes to Nacac, which the organisers acknowledged in Jamaica last year, when they presented him with an appreciation award for being the only athlete to have competed in every Nacac event up to last year.

“I’ve been going to Nacac since 2005, many years by myself,” Donawa said. “Cross country has been a major passion that I’ve had as a distance-running discipline. I told them [BNAA] that if they can come up with a team of three runners that I would participate as the fourth person. I’ve gone full circle because when it was called the CAC Cross Country, when we had the likes of Mike Watson, Tracy Wright and Jamal Hart. I was the youngest and now I’m the oldest.”

Donawa added: “My first CAC was in 1996 in Mexico and I’ve pretty much competed for Bermuda ever since, about 18 straight years competing in cross country for Bermuda in one way or another. In 2005, I went to the World Cross Country Championships in Saint-Etienne, France, which was the pinnacle of my career.

“I ended up being in the race with people like Kenenisa Bekele, the Ethiopian, and it was fun even though I only saw them at the start and at the finish when they were warming down. It was a tremendous experience to go over there and compete against people I had read about and seen on TV.”

Donawa expects Simons, Marshall and Mouchette, who attends college in Arizona, to set the pace for the Bermuda team in Tobago. “Lamont is running well,” Donawa said. “Trey is back and it is good to see him rededicated to the sport and, obviously, Juma is capitalising on some overseas training.

“On a whole, the team is well-balanced and the success of the team will be based on how well all four of us do. If the other three guys are ahead of me, we’ll have a really good chance of doing well, although that doesn’t mean I’m not in shape.

I’ll probably be one of the oldest in the field, although there was a Jamaican, Linton McKenzie, who used to run for Jamaica into his late forties.

“I’m glad that Lamont, Trey and Juma are keen to represent Bermuda. For me to go as an individual, I’ve done that enough times and would rather see the younger ones get the opportunity.

“This is not a free trip and I want to make sure I do well for the team, the country and, ultimately, myself.

“If I sign up for something, I want to do the very best I can. The day I don’t have that in my mind I’ll just run through the tracks in Somerset just for fitness. I don’t see that happening any time soon.”