Northern XC Champs

Another cross-country - another bad day at the office!

It's starting to become very frustrating now but I am just going to have to learn to accept that I can't run XC especially over really muddy courses like Sunderland yesterday.  I finished in 26^th yesterday, approx 4mins off Tom Lancashire who won the race from Steve Vernon and fellow Runnerslife athlete Andi Jones in 3^rd.

At the start of the race I felt good, and thought I had a good chance of repeating my top 10 run at the Northerns a few years ago in Leeds.  Training had been going well and I felt fresh going into the race.  Expectations were high from a team perspective as well as we knew if we all performed well we had a great chance of a medal and even the win of things worked out. Quickly from the start Lancashire and Vernon got away followed by Jones and I remember sitting in the group   behind the front 3 thinking that 4^th spot was pretty much anyone's and it was a case of who could run the best race in terms of tactics.  As we progressed round that first lap I began to realise that today wasn't going to be my day and I was going to struggle in the tough conditions.  My legs where beginning to feel heavy running through the mud already and I could feel myself struggling to keep pace with the group.  As we made our way onto the 2^nd of 3 laps I started to go backwards and from that point on everyone just went flying past me, and that was me finished.  I will admit I thought about dropping out as the conditions where so bad and I just felt as though I was getting nowhere in the mud but I took one for the team and got round as I knew we had a good chance of a medal.  The rest of the race seemed to be longest 12k I have ever done and every time I built up a bit of rhythm I would hit another muddy patch and it would slow me right down again to near enough walking pace.  The only positive is that Liverpool Harriers got the bronze medal even without two of our strongest runners, Gundersen and Harper.

Having read Andi Jones' race report now I feel slightly more comforted by the fact even he admits that it was one of the muddiest XC courses he has ever ran on, so it wasn't just me winging!

I need to pick myself up now and try and put all the hard work I have put into training into my race in Armagh and AAAs where hopefully the conditions under foot will be slightly better than yesterday!