The North District Cross-Country League at Keith is the first race of this year's cross country season. I don't do a lot of these. As the weather gets colder and the courses get further from home and muddier, my desire for competition rapidly wains. I only expect to run a couple of cross country events this year as well. This also marked the 25th anniversary of my first ever cross country race.
Here is last year's Keith XC report.
This is the first time I have ever taken the train to a race. I would normally have driven but I am still cost-conscious after being out of work for so long, and time conscious now that I am back in work and my week is suddenly 45 hours shorter. The amount it was going to cost in fuel was about the same as a train ticket and the times worked out fairly well. So I decided to take the train instead and that would give me some time to catch up on work and wedding planning, as well as writing this. I hoped the added side effect of not having to drive both ways would also be helpful. I had hoped to catch upon some studying as well but the train wifi just couldn't handle the lecture videos.
Keith is a 3-lap course round a couple of fields. Most of the surface is rutted farm tracks or grassy fields.
The start is fairly standard along a gravelly bit of farm track with a couple of big puddles on the right. I chose a line to keep me on the left as we started. This turned out to be a doubly good choice as about 40m into the race one of the leading runners took a tumble and there was a bit of a general melee as everyone else tried not to trample him. Things then calmed down round to the first field and everything strung out into a long stretched line of runners. I passed a couple of people who had started too fast.
I could see people around me that I expected to be racing so I thought I had my pacing about right. Then there was a short uphill section which was only wide enough to run single file. This seemed ok to start with but then we caught another of the female backmarkers. The only way past was to detour through the knee-high grass, which turned out to be mostly nettles with some other random thorned plants thrown in. Even in the 10 or so steps it took to get past her I got badly scratched and stung. from there everything settled down and the race started to stretch out a little.
Just past the finish line for the first lap and the watch buzzed for the second mile in 7 mins. A couple of guys overtook me at this point. I wasn't slowing down any (I ran 7:06 and 7:03 for the next two miles) but they seemed to have put in a bit of a move through the end of lap 1. Maybe the crowds had gotten them a bit riled up and they got carried away for a few minutes. I sat in behind the pair of them until we came round to the single-track section. I wanted to work up the hill but I wasn't willing to go back into the nettles to pass them so I sat in and took the recovery instead. As soon as we turned into the next field I pushed on and opened an easy gap on them.
Through to the end of lap 2 I felt quite good but again as we passed the crowds a different guy came through from behind. I let him go as I knew I was going steady and sensible. He gradually came back and I ended up tracking behind him for a while.
With the single track section coming I decided again to sit behind this guy to the top of that climb and then work on the downhill section into the next field. That worked really well and I easily opened a gap on him. It also started to bring me closer to the two guys in front. By now I knew there was less than a mile to go and I thought I could maybe just catch them so I dug pretty deep and was making ground. As we turned onto the short road uphill to the finish I thought a sprint finish might get me back to them, but trail shoes are not really designed for sprinting in and I couldn't get my style to adapt enough to make the change of pace that I needed. I was still closing all the way to the line but I left myself too much to do and they still had about 10 meters on me as we reached the finish line.
5.35 miles in 37:09.
I am really happy with that. It averages out at under 7mins/mile. For an off-road, non-flat course that is a pretty decent pace. It is only a few seconds a mile off my 10k pace from Glen Moray. OK the course was short but I think I could have carried on another mile at that sort of pace. it is also over 3 minutes faster than last year's time, which I was happy enough with when I ran it then.
Being able to type this, read the news and update my Tesco shopping on the way home is also a huge improvement on having to drive home after a race. For any future races where I am not taking large amounts of kit, I will have to seriously consider this as a travel option but next time round I need to make sure I find a carriage that isn't full of drunk teenagers.
Addendum
Full results here. Placed 32/52. Big improvement on last year's 48/58.
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