National XC Champs!

Let me set the scene for the National Cross Country Champs by reporting that a week after the race, I still do not have full feeling back in my toes.
For days after the race I was pretty much falling over every time I woke up and got out of bed, because my toes were numb.
I have never ever had such cold feet in my life! And that's saying something after the Midlands Cross Country Champs in Stafford a month ago.

With the Nationals up in Sunderland this year, I'd been looking forward to the race for a while and was determined to have a good run here. When the Nationals were held here a few years ago I was running in my first ever Senior Champs and had a great run despite a broken toe. Our Ladies team also picked up a Silver team medal, making it a fantastic day out.

A few years later and our team is a little depleted with my team mates focusing on marathons and a couple having babies. After a lot of tough cross country races this year, not everybody was very keen on yet another hard race, especially with the long journey - so it ended up being just me and Claire. Claire stayed at mine the night before to cut down the long journey and we left bright and early on Saturday morning. Thanks to social media we'd seen photos of the snow on the course before we even left the house, so we were prepared for cold conditions. As we headed north the snow started to fall and an accident on the M1 led to an interesting detour through Yorkshire to avoid the long delays.

For anybody reading this who hasn't experienced that National XC - it is an absolutely massive race. Thousands of people competing across all the age groups. This creates a fantastic atmosphere with coach loads of athletes from 11 to 111 (almost!) arriving from all over the country. It does however present some logistical challenges for the organisers and this year parking as a 10 minute bus ride from the course on a large industrial park. Thanks to some optimistic directions from myself ~ "I'm sure we'll find a space here" - we parked up as close to a bus stop and the course as we could and caught the bus to the course.

When we got off the bus the snow was still falling and it was bitterly cold. Tough conditions!
We warmed up (kind of) in the snow - thank goodness for waterproof shoes! changed into my spikes and instantly my feet were freezing. Doing strides through ice cold puddles meant my feet had gone numb before I even reached the startline. Regardless I had in my mind that this was the last XC race of the season and there was no way I was having a bad race!

As for the race itself - the gun went and I just ran as hard as I could the whole way round! I focused on getting a good start and making sure I was in a good position by the end of the first 600m at the bottom of the long downhill stretch. From then on it was a case of not letting anybody overtake me, overtaking as many people as I could and just pushing hard throughout! The conditions were tough and at times it felt more like a slog than a race but I actaully enjoyed the whole race. It was one of those rare days when it feels great to be racing hard! Recognising a few runners around me who I wanted to beat I managed to put in a good sprint finish overtaking a handful of women in the last 100m. I've still no idea how I managed this though as I was absolutely shattered and the finishing straight was one big mud pit! I overtook one lady who appeared to have actually got stuck in the mud and had come to a halt!

I'm happy to report that all the effort and suffering in the horrendous conditions was worth it as I finished 102nd - my best ever place in the Senior Nationals.

Afterwards Claire and I tried to warm down, but we were shivering too much, even with all our layers back on! We were both covered head to toe in mud - as you can see! Luckily we got back to the car quite quickly and home in good time - I still hadn't warmed up though and I was shivering for the rest of the evening. Regardless, I'm now recovering and very pleased with a great end to my cross-country season.

Next year I've got some big aims for cross country after the improvements I've made over the last few months. Now it's on to my main aim for the year - a good duathlon and triathlon season. And hopefully no more races in snow for a while!