It was the first day of the Kent League Cross Country season this Saturday. Race 1 at Footscray Meadows. My love of running was reinforced in secondary school by XC, even though running round Marble Hill Park wasn’t really that challenging or muddy. I was chatting with one of the juniors about what appealed to me about it and I think it was because it was something I was OK / quite good at. I always desperately wanted to be in the school football / rugby teams. More often than not I wasn’t quite good enough (or as good as the other boys) so I’d be a sub / squad player. When it came to XC I usually found myself in the top 5 or so, never quite quick enough to be top 3 but not far behind. I’ve definitely got fond memories and this helps.
Saturday’s course was fairly benign in XC terms, the weather (until my race) was fine, light rain, not cold and good running conditions. The 3 juniors from Thanet ran well for their first races, all learning something and acquitting themselves nicely. More to come from them. The U17/U20 women’s race was a great watch as it had the U65 women & U70 men. The young women set off, a pack that stayed pretty tightly together, followed by the older runners who begun to thin out pretty quickly. It was so inspiring watching these guys still out on the course, working hard and enjoying the experience. A goal for sure.
I was very pleased with my race – I was determined not to go out too hard, so I could maintain my pace and pick up at the end. To that end I ran a couple of 60sec efforts in my warm up to gauge the speed. For this and the next 2 XC races I’m seeing them as the equivalent of tempo sessions with a finishing push. That way I’ll enjoy them a lot more and also run to where I am at the moment. Having learnt the hard way in XC before, it can be very easy to get excited at the start and go out far too hard. This really did help as I settled into a nice rhythm for the first two 1km loops and then maintained this effort for the next 4.7k. With 1.3k to go I kicked on a little and then the heavens opened. Absolute downpour, which you can get a little sense of in this video below (cropped from Mark Hookway’s ever present footage of the races):
I ended up 90/260 and 9/60 in the V50 in a time of 32:53 – which I was more than happy with as pretty much in the top third overall (I envisaged mid pack). More importantly I was able to maintain my pace / effort and pick up at the end, which was my main goal.
Next race is in 2 weeks at Sommerhill in Tonbridge
