Scottish East Relays

My cross country season is officially underway. It started this Saturday at the Scottish East relays near Edinburgh. For about 2 weeks before the race I hadnt been feeling great, just tired and although some sessions had been solid some had been pretty bad. I'd also had to stop my core for a bit because I was getting stomach cramps when I ran. I just didnt feel like i'd been training well so going into the race, I didnt expect it to go that well but at same time I didnt want to run bad. It may sound bad but even though I felt like this and people were saying "dont expect anything, just run and be happy with whatever" .. the competitor in me couldnt do this. I wanted to win and because it wasnt a 'big' race I felt I had to win.

Our Dundee Hawkhill team consisted of Eilish, Sarah and I and we ran in that order over the 4km course. Eilish ran well and bought us in in second place in a time of 14.30something, Sarah then ran a strong leg in 14.40something and held second position. At one point I thought she had caught the Central girl but the Central girl was strong and pretty much kept the gap between them and us. When Sarah handed over to me on the last leg, Central AC had a decent but not big gap on us and we had a decent but not great gap on Lothian AC. So I knew that I had to run strong to catch Central but also because Sarah (Inglis) was on last leg for Lothian and she would be chasing me down hard so I spoke to Liz and just decided that I had to go out strong and keep pushing all the way. So Sarah (kelly) handed over to me I started reasonably hard - afterwards I was told that people worried (namely my own team) that i'd gone off too hard and could pay for it later on. I didn't think I went off that hard but I caught the Central girl relatively early on but I was very aware of Sarah who had closed the gap to 7 seconds apparently quite quickly, so I kept pushing on and managed to open it back up and we won :D . I felt quite tired but I also felt strong when I was running so that was good and hopefully something to build on. im not worried about the tiredness as im in heavy training and not ease down so its to be expected. I also ended up running the fastest leg in 13.52 by 10seconds on Sarah Inglis's 14.02. So a good day for Dundee.

Well Done to everyone who raced or Good luck to anyone racing next weekend.

....x