National Cross Country Relays

The National Cross Country Relays will always be a pretty special event for me as we have medalled twice at this event.  With it only being four runners to make a team, it opens it up to smaller clubs to have a serious crack at it but that means having your best four runners out.

I’ve been doing virtually all of my sessions with the lads down at Stockport since August so it was absolutely brilliant to see them lead from start to finish to take gold.  The Martin brothers have been very loyal to Sunderland having trained with Stockport since their move to the area three years ago but as their stay here is looking pretty permanent, they have finally put pen to paper.

Behind Stockport, there was plenty to play for.  I was down to run leg 3 following on from Matt Barnes and Marius Ionescu.  Matt has a great record in this event having made the fastest 10 legs overall on several occasions but a sickness bug completely ruined his race and he struggled to finish, his 33^rd place on the opening leg was very uncharacteristic of Matt’s runs at Mansfield.  I had felt that I might be going out with a lead on leg 3 but that was now never going to happen.  It didn’t stop Marius from running a blinding leg and passing 23 teams to take us into the top 10.  I set off in a surprisingly isolated position, overtaking Shaftesbury just entering the woods and then being joined by Salford’s Joe Bailey shortly after.  It was like Sutton Park all over again!   It wasn’t until the start of the second lap we passed another runner: Chris Carter from Enfield & Haringey.  “25 secs off bronze!!” came the shout from a Salford supporter.  It had been 35 so it sounded like we were going pretty well, even if we didn’t visually seem to be doing any damage.  Coming through the woods, I pushed on ahead of Joe who seemed to be running out of steam after his early effort to catch me. 

I wasn’t getting away from Joe however, but the Highgate runner who had been stalking us all race came by us up the final hill and the two of us moved away from Joe.  Coming down the final section of the course, I got a sniff of New Marske and just failed to catch them by a second or two.   Had improved our position to 9^th, narrowly behind 7^th and ahead of Joe. 

My time didn’t compare very well with previous attempts around here but the mud on this particular occasion was the worst I have seen this course and it seemed to get worse as the race progressed.  None of the fastest 10 times came from the final two legs and my time was the 5^th fastest of leg 3 – just 15secs down on the fastest time of the leg. 

Our teams final position was 20^th – hopefully we can have another serious go at it in 2012 but it will require everybody to be fit and healthy!