Liverpool XC: Euro Trials – Senior Women’s Preview

This Saturday’s Liverpool XC is my favourite race of the cross-country season. Not only is it fixture 2 of British Athletics Cross Challenge Series, it’s also the trials race for the Great Britain team for the European XC Champs. It’s my favourite race as a fan of the sport, because a number of the top athletes haven’t faced each other at cross-country since March – making the results hard to predict and the racing always exciting. Plus, this fixture is also part of the Liverpool & District League and the Mid-Lancs League, meaning it attracts hundreds of athletes in the Senior races from internationals to enthusiastic club runners. 

At the sharp end of the field, runners will be battling it out for 1 of 6 places on the British team for the European XC Championships in Belgrade, Serbia on 8^th December. With only the top 3 guaranteed selection and the U23s racing alongside the seniors, competition will be fierce with only Gemma Steel a dead-cert for a place on the start line in Belgrade. With Julia Bleasdale returning from injury since her 8^th places over 5km and 10km at the 2012 Olympics, now out of Liverpool with a cold, she could take one of the 3 discretionary spots after showing good form with a 56 second victory over Tish Jones at the Surrey League and a 23^rd place at the Cross de Atapuerca in Spain.

This Autumn’s road racing circuit has seen dominant performances from Gemma Steel at the Birmingham Half Marathon and National Road Relay Champs, with a whole host of others running well across the Run Britain and Great Run series. Louise Damen and Tish Jones both set PBs at last weekends’ Leeds Abbey Dash, whilst Charlotte Purdue made a spectacular return to racing at a very windy Great South Run. Purdue will hope to have progressed from there and come to Liverpool in the form to challenge Steel, but Damen is focusing on the roads this Winter and won’t be competing. Purdue’s Aldershot team mates will be competitive as well – Steph Twell’s pedigree over road, track and cross country means you can never discount her whilst Lily Partridge, this year’s Southern XC Champion clocked the fastest leg at the National XC Relays a couple of weeks ago, as well as making an encouraging half marathon debut at Birmingham where she finished 4^th in 74:55. Partridge should be set to compete in her 5^th successive European XC Champs, most likely in the U23 team but could challenge for a top 6 place overall. 

Few athletes have faced each other over 8km of mud and grass yet this season, so it will be interesting to see whether Gemma Steel’s dominance on the road is challenged on the country by the top performers so far this Winter. At the opening fixture of the British Athletics Cross Challenge at Bristol, a small but high quality field fought it out in the first major XC race of the season, with Katie Brough finishing 4 seconds clear of Juliet Potter. With Lauren Deadman, Stevie Stockton, Jane Potter and Emma Clayton completing the top 6 here, they should all be in the mix for a top 6 spot at Liverpool. Others we can expect to see near the front of the race on Saturday include U23 Beth Potter and Trafford AC’s Jacqueline Fairchild who ran Bristol winner Katie Brough close in the opening fixture of the Manchester League and backed this up with the 4^th fastest leg at the National XC Relays. Lauren Howarth is another to show great form on the roads this Autumn, in addition to her 6th place finish over 3km at the European Indoor Champs back in March. Elle Baker, Emily Wicks and Rosie Smith were all GB representatives last winter and can’t be discounted this year either should they race. Last year’s breakthrough act, Caryl Jones, may be coming back in to form but she’s yet to show she can follow up on her 15^th place at last year’s European XC. Aly Dixon, not known as a cross country runner, is returning from the injury that put paid to her Autumn Marathon plans and could be another to watch.

Saturday should see a highly competitive race with good indications for team success in Serbia in a fortnight’s time. Will Purdue or any others challenge Steel over 8km of undulating grass and mud? We look forward to finding out!

Expanding the Blog

For a few weeks now I’ve been considering expanding the subject matter of my blog. Over the last couple of years I’ve been writing quite regularly and often quite less regularly about myself. I’m not sure I’m interesting enough to justify producing such a large amount of words on! Some weeks I just do my training almost exactly the same as the week before. Some weeks I do exciting races in other countries, or do training sessions so ridiculously epic that they deserve their own entry in cyber-space (but the former hasn’t happened this year and the latter happens very rarely and only because of Don Nichol at Altrincham AC in the depths of Winter!). But most of the time I’m just being me, running, cycling and swimming around. And there’s only so much that can be said about that!

So instead of continuing to write endlessly about what I’ve been doing, I’m going to treat my avid readers to blogs on what I’ve been thinking about. I regularly subject my boyfriend to lengthy one-sided discussions (rants) about sports related issues that are consuming my thoughts, and whilst I’m sure he does love listening to them, he has suggested that they could add a new dimension to my blog. Perhaps he thinks my views on sport are so well-informed and interesting they really need to be shared with the wider world, or perhaps he’s just had enough of hearing about my outrage at the lottery funding or non-funding of athletes he’s never heard of. Regardless, I’m going to expand my blog to cover my thoughts on sports as well as my own adventures in sports.

Please do leave comments if you disagree/agree with what I’m saying and feel free to share my blogs with other passionate sports fans!

Watch this space...

Coming back from Injury

If you’ve not read every single moan I’ve written in this blog, then you’ve missed a lot of complaining about all the races I’ve missed: big races, World Championships, small races, team races, track races, road races, duathlons, triathlons – everything from 400m on the track to Olympic distance triathlon. I wouldn’t recommend you read my old blog posts, unless you’re feeling so entirely out-of-this-world positive that you need a bit of negativity to bring you back to reality. Being injured is a pain – actually a pain; walking, driving, sleeping, sitting etc were all a pain, never mind trying to run, bike or swim. And on top of that it’s a bit of a mental battle as you see every sporting thing you’d planned going ahead without you – races still go on, everyone else keeps on training, sporting social circles continue to exist without you. You’re confined to the side lines of what had been a core part of your life, and it’s hard to stay positive during these times. No matter what other activities you fill your time with or how you make the most of the extra time and seize the opportunity to focus on other interests, there’s no denying that when you can’t do something you love and are passionate about, things get a little tough.

I absolutely love my sport(s) and everything they bring to my life. I love running. Every time I see somebody else running, even if I’ve already run that day, I will wish I was running. Every time I see water, I wish I was swimming in it – and I’ve been that way as long as I can remember. And every time I see a cyclist speeding along beautiful country roads, I usually wish I could cycle as well as them and then I wish I was cycling! As I’ve said before, the social side of sport is fantastic – the camaraderie from being part of a team, the friends you make training and competing and the like-minded people you meet everywhere you run, bike or swim! Seeing friends work hard in training and improve is always inspiring, and I love how happy people are when they’ve had a good race. It’s a great world to be part of and although I do love getting good results of my own, I knew I’d be happier as soon as I was back in my sporting world instead of letting it all pass me by, following my friends triumphs and tribulations from the side lines.

So after missing a lot of races, less than 2 months ago I decided I’d had quite enough of not racing. Even if I was going to be racing quite slowly, I wanted to be part of it all again. Since then I’ve done a few road races and some short cross-country races – 5km is my limit till I manage to get some more training in. I was hoping I’d be able to race myself back to a reasonable level of fitness. For me, no training every matches the intensity of racing. I would say I can push myself quite hard in training, hit times on reps that I need to – but I often have another gear in racing that I can never find in training. Must be my competitiveness!

It’s taken 6 weeks, but I now feel like I’m able to race hard over 5km, which is a huge improvement on where I was at the end of September, running XC races in trainers and having to take a few days off a week. I’ve had my first top 10 XC finish of the season, finishing 7^th at the North Staffs league in Stafford, plus a week later I clocked a decent 5km time of 18:58 in the Telford ParkRun. I’ve had a great time racing again, training back on the track with my team mates and enjoying some lovely runs round the countryside. I’m definitely a lot more positive about everything than I was 2 months ago, but whilst I’m on my way back, I’m certainly not there yet and this weekend reminded me how far I still have to go.

This weekend was the Grafham Water Duathlon that I had optimistically entered a few weeks back when British Triathlon suddenly announced a raft of late season races which would be qualifiers for next years’ European Duathlon Champs. After missing pretty much every single big race I wanted to do this year, I was really annoyed that the qualifiers had been moved 5 months ahead of their normal schedule, giving me very little chance of getting fit enough to qualify. Regardless of this, I entered the race and hoped that I would be able to take part. Last weekend I was out on my bike, and after 30 minutes cycling I had a bit of an epiphany…no matter how much I wanted to race, it was very unlikely my body would actually hold up! It didn’t matter how much I “wanted it”, there was to be no battle of mind over matter, I simply had not been able to do the training to even make it round the course. And if I tried there was a definite risk of making my injury worse. So I didn’t race this weekend, which of course means I didn’t qualify for the European Duathlon Champs in 5 months’ time. Luckily though, the World Duathlon Champs are a mere 6 months away, and the races to qualify for the British team are a good 4 months away still, giving me plenty of time to get back to full fitness. Needless to say I am a little annoyed that these late season qualification races were announced with only a few weeks’ notice. My annoyance comes from not having time to regain fitness after injury, but I know a number of my fellow duathletes are a little annoyed at having last minute additions to their already long seasons, which for many started with the British Champs back in March. I believe the normal Spring qualification races were moved to the preceding Autumn as a result of the poor weather conditions we experienced this Spring which prevented some of the qualification races from going ahead as planned – so I can understand the logic here, I just would have liked it to have fitted in with my return from injury a little better!

So, what’s next? Well I’ll be aiming for a few Spring Duathlons now and the World Duathlon Champs in Spain. Over the Winter I’ve got a good few XC races to go at with the Midlands and National XC Champs being my target races. I’m also hoping to get in a couple of 10km races as I build up my training, so I’ve got plenty to keep me motivated to get back to full fitness. And if my love of running wasn’t enough, I’ve got lots of club races with the hope of team prizes and cakes to look forward to as well!