Scottish 4km Cross Country Champs

Hello. Another weekend and another race. I hope everyone who raced over the weekend was happy with their performances.

This weekend I headed to Glasgow for the Scottish 4km Cross Country championships. I traveled over from Edinburgh with a few mates and although I didn't have a great week regarding my preparation with my lack of running all week, I was still looking to the race. The course was changed a little from last year, but it was still just a shade over 4km (2 laps) according to all the Garmin wearers.

The course was narrow but I was content to get a place in the second row, just behind Andrew Douglas, who also runs for Inverclyde. The gun went and we were off. I seen a Central A.C. vest hit the front very early, and assumed it was Ali Hay, "he's not hanging around is he" I thought. I got up to the leading pack before the first turn and realized it wasn't Ali. I spoke with Zac the day before the race and we decided on what way to approach the race.

I was more the content sitting in the lead group for the first mile lap, but after about one mile, I though it was too comfortable and there still seemed to be quite a large group. It's only 4km so it was going to be over before anyone noticed so I didn't want to leave anything to chance. I picked up the pace and Ali was the only one who followed me. By the half way point we were pretty much clear of the rest of the field.

We all know Ali is fast, certainly faster than me, so I didn't want to let it come down to a sprint finish. I put the pressure on for the whole second lap, and although I could feel my achilles throughout the race, I didn't want to slow down, or ease up. In the end I got the win by six seconds, just pulling clear over the last 500m or so.

I love racing, and it doesn't get much better than 4km XC, it's short, it's fast and not what you would usually associate XC running with so the race in itself is fun, but it's always nice to run well, so I wanted to fun fast and win if I could. The weather was great, there was great atmosphere all along the course from my club mates at Inverclyde, and we got second team behind Central A.C. despite missing some great guys in Mark Pollard and Chris Mackay so that was good.

Ali Hay finished 2nd, and Mark Mitchell delighted the crowd with his 3rd place finish in his first XC race in three years. We had some other winners from Inverclyde, in the u-13 girls race Emma Mitchell crossed the line first and in the U-13 boys race Ross Gray was victorious. Congrats too all who competed over the weekend. Full results can be found on scottishathletics.org.uk.

Mark Mitchell , Dan Mulhare, Ali Hay