Stats

I spent some time today analysing my results from the whole of the Mid Lancs Cross Country league yesterday, comparing these to three other athlete’s results which were similar.  My three strongest races were Burnley, Liverpool and Barrow.  All three of these were relatively flat and not terribly muddy so I think there might be a pattern emerging.  Hyndburn, where I didn’t perform well, was REALLY muddy (that’s the race I went over on my ankle in and ended up in the first aid tent afterwards), and Blackburn was very hilly AND muddy.  Kendal is the exception which breaks the rule.  I was last out of the four runners I analysed at Kendal, however when looking at my Garmin stats, my pace was faster than at Barrow and was actually the third fastest pace of all cross country races I’ve ever done.  Perhaps all the other girls in my analysis were just having a really good day.  I do wish I hadn’t worn spikes at Kendal though as there was quite a lot of path I could have run on had I been in fell shoes which would have taken a good few seconds off my time. This just backs up what I said yesterday about struggling with hills when I hit them at speed so it's good that I know what I need to work on. 

Here’s the example of my stats where you can see how much better I performed in the above mentioned three races.  I have used three comparators and have put down our positions in the race, together with my position between just the four of us:

                            Burnley            Liverpool          Hyndburn         Barrow             Blackburn        Kendal

Me                                  81 – 1st           78 – 2nd          88 – 4th           40 – 1st           65 -3rd            65 – 4th

Garstang runner 1        83                    79                    71                    43                    58                    60

Garstang runner 2        92                    105                  76                    44                    63                    54

Red Rose runner            94                    76                    52                    0                      68                    51

As you can see, in Burnley and Barrow I was the fastest of the four of us and, in Liverpool, the second fastest.  All three of the other ladies beat me in the overall league standings and are all in my age category or younger so they will be my targets for next season.  Annoyingly, the results only use your best four races but if you add up the points from all six races, I actually did much better than Garstang runner 2. 

Turning to tonight’s run, this was just another easy one (as I did have today down as a rest day but the beautiful sunshine was calling to me) along to the top barn and back.  As we got near to home we bumped into Jan from the club and ran the rest of the route with her which was nice as I find that last bit up the path from the school to my house to be the hardest (just because it's at the end of the run and is slightly uphill) and Jan helped take my mind off it.  I told Jan about my problem with hills in race and she suggested a 2 Lads session I should do to help with this so I'll give that a go, possibly later this week if I can run without Ruby. 

Total distance - 3.3 miles