Hampshire Cross Country Championships

Saturday was the Hampshire Cross Country Championships - my first race since injury.

This was always going to be a tester: a chance to sit at the back and test how my legs felt, letting the rest of the team do all the work. Oh what joy then when team captain Marilyn told me that we'd had several dropouts due to commitments/injury/illness and she was 'relying on me'. No pressure then!

We arrived at a rather saturated Dibden Inclosure: a beautiful location on the edge of the New Forest. I put on my brand new spikes having first debated spike placement, being the spike virgin I am. They immediately got baptised as I warmed up on sodden ground ankle deep in water in places. As I did my side step drills my adductor tightened - not the best of starts! With hindsight I should have tried to massage away the tightness as I didn't do myself any favours racing with a tight adductor. I seem to have got away with it though, despite running much of the race with a feeling in my lower abdomen worryingly similar to the original psoas minor injury!!

The start was uphill which helped me sit back and let Shelly and Lucy go off and take up the pace. As we U-turned on to the first of the 2 laps I encountered a small gorse bush right in the middle of the course on the bend, which I ran straight through giving me several long scratches on my leg. Surely they could have put the turn 1 metre further south?

The course is fairly flat with terrain varying from grass, sandy trail with or without tree roots depending on whether it was heath or woodland, and a few short sections of boggy mud. Hills were mercifully few with 2 short but steep sections on each lap. All in all quite a nice course.

I made a few places up as soon as we hit the first boggy bit as runners pussy-footed around the edges trying to avoid the thickest mud. Why do we do that? It was much quicker to just plough through the middle, taking the direct route. I nearly lost a shoe on one bit though!

I also overtook a few on the uphill sections, which rather surprised me. I haven't done any hill training in the last 6 months so expected to be poor on the hills. What I have done though is lots of weight training: I'm currently dead-lifting my body weight and squatting 75kg. It looks like the strength work may be paying off!

I was overtaking regularly on the first lap and by the 2nd I caught and overtook Shelly and Lucy, somewhat to my surprise. The 2 of them were having a good battle, with Shelly eventually prevailing. Well done to Lucy who has been improving rapidly lately. Let's hope she can continue to improve at the same rate!

I led the team home. Given that I've only been running outside for a month I'm over the moon about that. I'm clearly slower than I was, but I haven't lost too much speed in my time off. That makes me optimistic that I can get everything back in time for FLM08. The power of cross-training during injury!

Marilyn and Ruth followed us home to score well for the team. Lucy is a senior, so the rest of us were all needed to score for the vet team. We finished 12th senior team and 5th vet team - a good result! I was 43rd and 5th W45. Marilyn was 2nd W60 - nice one Marilyn.

The men were also 5th vet team and 16th senior team - well done boys.