Finally, the last XC race of the season! I've probably mentioned before that I have a love/hate relationship with cross country. I love the team spirit of it all but I hate the race itself. So fast going and full of energy sapping mud.
Today, however, was the least muddy cross country I have ever done, to the point that my legs were perfectly clean afterwards and my shoes completely dry.
One of my other reasons for disliking cross country is the time of day the race is held, i.e. 2pm. It makes it really hard to know what and when to eat. If I have my brekkie when I get up I'll be starving by the race but I don't want to eat too much in the hours preceding it. I tried to wait as long as I could before my breakfast and took Ruby out for a short run/walk on an empty stomach soon after getting up. I lasted until about 9.45 but then had to make my porridge.
As expected, I got hungry en route to the race and so had to buy a pack of hob nobs whilst we stopped to fill up with fuel. I restrained myself and only ate three though, which was very difficult for me because I'm a pig.
The race was right near the centre of Lancaster, but the car park was really far away from the start. We couldn't even find it at first and I started to panic about missing the start of the race so Duncan had to drop me off whilst he found out where parking was. Good job he did drop me off because he didn't end up getting to the race until half way through it!
It was a pretty flat course with just a couple of small inclines but was much less boring than Burnley, which I had thought it might be similar to. I didn't mind it really and felt like I had done quite well. It was three laps and I did start to struggle on the last one, especially because the start of each lap involved running into a strong wind which was hard work. I passed quite a lot of girls during the race and very few passed me so that's always a good thing.
As usual, I managed my sprint finish and could hear a girl creeping up on me but I managed to hold her off.
I'm pleased to say that running this race has secured my wins for the club's XC championship and veteran XC championship and has also secured my second place in the overall club championship. At the presentation evening last night I also picked up second prize for the road championship so did quite well really. I now have some vouchers so I can make a start on replacing my expired shoes (see last Saturday's post!).
This might be my last year of placing in the club championships as we have a lot of good lady runners now so I'm really pleased I managed to win a couple of trophies this year.
I must admit, I was having a good look around when I was on the start line to see whether Erica had turned up like she had been threatening to do last night. She was running Flower Scar today but kept winding me up saying that she might double up and do XC too so she could win the trophies. You'd think butter wouldn't melt but I think she might have a dark side! Watch out!
Morning run/walk distance - 1.5 miles
Warm up distance - 1.1 miles
Race distance - 3.3 miles
Total distance - 5.9 miles
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