World Cross Country 2011

This is THE toughest race in the world, anyone who's done it will not argue with that. It is just so fast from the gun and there is no let off. For me my plan was to approach this cautiously and not overcook things early on and then try and run a strong middle of the race and hang on till the end hoping to maybe get in the top 60.

As soon as the gun went, that plan went out the window. I ran like a school kid, all excited, caught up in the moment and legged it. I had abit of a nightmare and ran into the back of Andy Vernon after about 50m and his 12mil spikes sliced straight down my leg cutting open 3 blood vessels. I wasn't really aware of this at the time, I just knew it was a bad cut as I could feel it stinging pretty bad. I didn't let this bother me, I carried on with my race, running like a looney for the first 4k.

The race was 6 laps of exactly 2k per lap. The course was perfect underfoot, I would compare it to a Premiership football pitch it was that good. There was 3 sets of 3 logs each lap, yes, that 63 logs to jump over during the race! There was also 3 small inclines each lap, nothing to worry about but after 10k worth of running you were certain to feel them.

On the first lap I went through 2k in 5:42 in 48th position, probably a little higher up than I should have been and definitely faster than I should have been. At 4k I was in 53rd and passed through in 11:41. At 6k I had began to slow, I was in 65th and passed through in 17:57 and still first Brit. Originally I thought i'd gone through 5k a little faster but it must have been about the 14:45 mark. That time would have been nice if i'd ran even paced!

Things started to go bad for me on the 4th lap, way too early! Having just had a slap on the arse by Gunny coming round to 8k I went through that split in 24:29 in 73rd. My 5th lap was my worst of the race and I dropped back to 81st and slipped to 5th Brit passing 10k in 31:11

I then held things together on the last lap and came home in a disappointing 83rd place. A big lesson was learnt from this race and you cannot approach the World Cross aggressively! 

Saying that, you can approach it aggressively if you're one of these two: (scroll to 1:40 into the video)