Despite it being about half a mile from my parents house I have never actually raced on this course before. The North League race in Elgin has been held on several courses over the last 20 years. It has been on this course for a few years now. Last year it was all I could manage to go there and do a bit of marshalling. For the two years before I couldn't even have managed that much.
This year I went for a haircut in the morning. Then parked my car at my parents house and mountain biked up to the start line. It is a mile uphill, nice easy 12 minute pedal, gave me a good warm-up. Then I had about 45 minutes to change and warm-up for the race start.
The race is 3 laps around a 2-mile course. The weather was crisp, but dry and not windy.
First lap started with a mass charge downhill and a quarter mile of land rover track in there is a sharp left turn and then it turns gently uphill, still on the land rover track. It climbs back up to level with the start then turns onto smaller rooted tracks and drops downhill again. This was more like what I have been used to at Kirkhill so I was pretty comfortable dealing with it. The rougher surface started to sort out some of the track and road runners and the field settled down a bit. Then the end of the lap the last quarter mile is uphill back to the start of the loop again. Total ascent on each lap is about 200ft, so it is by no means a hill race, but it isn't flat either. First lap done in 15 minutes.
Second lap I was having a couple of problems. The major one being that I was getting a bit dizzy. I am going to put this down to the cold air, although I also wonder if Thursday's flu-jab might not have contributed a bit as well. This lap took 16 minutes 09 and I lost a couple of places. I wasn't really struggling with the pace or the course, I think I just wasn't working hard enough or wasn't breathing properly in the cold air.
By lap 3, I was able to get going again and I managed to start picking off a few places. There were a group of 5 runners ahead as I came to the end of the land rover track and I set my sights on catching them before the finish. I was gaining on them and I was still picking up the pace mile on mile, even going faster up the last hill. I got three of them but a couple of them had obviously kept a bit in the tank for the last lap as well and managed to hold off my attack. I finished uphill with my fastest mile of the day, and with a last 50 meter sprint to steal one more place on the line.
Looking at the results I am a bit disappointed. 45:52 for a 6 mile cross country course, on a rough surface, and quite an up and down course is actually an ok time, but I was 56th in a race with only 71 finishers. The top-20 were 'proper' runners, no danger of getting near them. 20-40 were either decent club level cross-coutry runners or ex-'proper' runners, maybe back in the day I would have been in the mix with them but not nowadays. But from 40 down it was into the sort of people that I really should be able to easily compete with, being half way back through them was a bit disappointing.
Also I had a bit too much left when I finished. I was just finished changing back into my biking gear as the heavens opened. Rather than go to the hall for tea and cakes I decided to just head straight back to my parents. Clocked the downhill mile in 4 minutes. Showing I definitely left too much in the tank.
Good to be able to go to a run-only race and not struggle with anxiety problems. Need to get along to some more of these this year. And at least get into the top two-thirds if not the top-half.
Next race might be Inverurie Duathlon next weekend. Although it would have to be perfect weather for me to take the TT bike out and I don't want to race it on my road bike.
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