Tomorrow is the Northern XC and is a race that Liverpool Harriers are really looking forward to (some of us more than others!) Hopefully if we all run well we should be in the mix for some medals, but it won't be an easy task with so many strong teams in the North currently, with the usual challengers Leeds, Morpeth, Alty and the new noisy neighbours Stockport.  We have a lot of strength in depth at the moment and it will be hard to get in the scoring 6 but having that depth means if someone has a bad race we have plenty of runners who can step up and perform on the day, something we have lacked in the past.  We are still not at full strength though and missing a few key runners but hopefully this is a sign of things to come in the future.  I'm sure Richie Burney will pull out a massive performance as usual, the Northerns are his Olympic final and fit or not he's always well up for it. On a personal note my best ever performance in the Northerns as a senior is 9^th so if I can beat that I'll be very pleased over the muddy stuff.  Fingers crossed I don't have a repeat of last years disaster!  I'm not actually sure what the course is going to be like as I have never raced there before but its on a race course I believe so it should be interesting. All this rain is not making things look promising though and its looking more than likely as if its going to be a mud bath. Tomorrow will be my last XC race of the year before hitting the indoors and racing a 5km over in Ireland in one of my favourite races of the year the Armagh 5km.  The start list is now up and it looks like it could be one of the best fields ever assembled over there so hopefully we can have some nice weather and all work together to have a crack at the course record which I think is 13:54.

Training this year so far has gone well, with some good track sessions and tempo runs. I've been very lucky to have company from Danny Mooney and David Devine this winter amongst others and it's been a massive help pushing each other on.  Sometimes Dave will give the lads slightly shorter efforts such as the other week when I ran 4min efforts and they ran 3min efforts.  It means we can share the pace and it brings so much more out of yourself when your training with other runners around you.  Danny and Dave are both in great shape and I can't wait to see them both race this summer.  Danny ran a PB in his first race out in the indoors of 3:46 so I really think he can push 3:40 in the summer.  Lewis Moses beat him in the BMC who is obviously one of the top 15 boys in the country.  And as for Dave he constantly keeps putting in massive performances in training, although they both ducked my 10mile tempo last Thursday...

Thanks for reading and good luck to everyone racing tomorrow.