This weekend has been a much anticipate weekend for me, since qualifying back in January. Why...? because this is my first English schools, even though I was running as the older age senior girls, which also makes it my last. I would say my last few weeks have not been ideal in the lead up to this race, having picked up a few niggles. I knew I had to be fit enough to run English schools because I didn't want to hold a place in the team which someone would be able to fill, who was in a fitter position than I. Even though I have had little run training recently, I knew I would be able to run this weekend to a good standard. The journey up to Leeds started on Friday at 10:45 at Tonbridge for me, where I was being picked up by the Kent coach to make our way up to Leeds. It was a long journey following some delays on the motorway but we did finally make it to the hotel at around 6:30. This gave us just enough time to put our stuff in our rooms before heading off for some dinner. Dinner was really good, with a buffet style... perfect for all of us hungry runners. It consisted of some turkey, pasta, veggie lasagna and veg... a bit of a mix but none the less, very tasty. The time seemed to fly and after a team meeting, followed by a shower, I was ready to jump into bed. The hotel was nice, but I always struggle to sleep in another bed so woke up rather tired. I had also managed to pick up a cold over the last few days and waking up to not being able to breath through my nose wasn't ideal. After a quick pack of my bags, I headed down to breakfast. Again breakfast didn't dissapoint and even though there wasn't porridge, this wasn't really a problem as I'm happy to have toast instead. After checking out, we were ready to jump into the coach and head off to the course. Kent arrived pretty early to the course to give the people racing first a good two hours before their race, however it meant the senior girls had got there about 4 hours before their race. After having only arrived for 30 mins, the cold suddenly started to hit me and my toes were feeling it the worst. I was really starting to feel rubbish at this point because I could feel myself slowly freezing. Thankfully Holly (who won the senior girls race) allowed us to jump in her camper van to warm up... honestly I am not sure what I would have done without this. This meant that even though we were unable to support all the races we were keeping warm and stayed in here up until the hour before our race. On my warm up I actually felt like I warmed up... well I never cooled down after getting out the van, so that was good. However in the warm up I could feel my hip flexors tightening, which worried me as this had really stopped me in my tracks at the inter counties the previous weekend. After applying some gel, I was hoping they would hold up for the race, considering it was only 4km but hilly. We were soon waiting just outside the start line and then we were called into our pens. This is when suddenly the weather turned on us... the wind suddenly blew up and the air suddenly turned to ice. Just as the gun went, the sky started to snow... this combined with the winds created a lovely blizzard for us to run in. The first 5 minutes were some seriously tough conditions and my fingers and nose were so cold. The course went by quickly with a short and a long lap, made up of a lot of uphill, then straight back down again. The conditions under foot had turned pretty horrendous by the time it was our race and was fine in some places. However in others, keeping your spikes on your feet was the problems. Coming into the last 100m it was a slight up hill and I really had to dig deep through this and finally crossed the line in 123rd. If you had told me a month ago I had come 123rd out of the over 300 girls in my race, I would have been disappointed. But, with the injury problems I have had and the previous two bad xc races (affecting me mentally), I was actually chuffed to come in where I did. More importantly I had made it to my first and last english schools xc champs and made it to the end of xc season, just about in one piece. Kent just missed out on a team medal, but we had some amazing individual performances within the team, picking up 1st, 9th, 14th and 16th.
It was a long journey home and I finally made it into bed at about 10pm. However as I am writing this now, I am in bed and have been for the last few hours feeling pretty horrendous and just can't really even get out of bed. The long xc season and the stress of being in my final year of school has just all hit me I think. I need some time to chill now, recover and come back strong for track season. G x
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Over a month ago at Kent Champs (blog post here), where I qualified for the Inter Counties for the first time after missing out on selection last year. This meant I was very excited for this race and well worth the long travel up to Loughborough. On Friday, I did my usual routine with pasta and had my bags all packed for the early morning. I had an early night to prepare myself for the 6:30am start, where my mum and I were travelling up together. On arrival, the realisation of the mud hit me hard. Firstly I had just come in my trail shoes... a big mistake, wellies were a necessity! I was sliding all over the place, there wasn't an inch of grass on the field where the tents were. I arrived slightly late to Loughborough after sitting at stand still on the m25 for about an hour after an accident. I had a quick walk of the course but it didn't take long because you could see most of the course from one spot on the course. Soon enough I had finished my warm up and was making my way to the start line. On the start line we were placed in pens and I was near the back, following my not so great run at Nationals. When the gun went the mass of people was quite overwhelming and I found myself squeezed right in the middle of the crowd and didn't have many directions in which I could go. The course was muddy all over and I struggled to pick up a rhythm because of the tough conditions and felt I couldn't pick up much speed over the course. The mud seemed to suck the energy from my legs along with the hills, this is clearly something I need to improve on next season. I crossed the line in about 120th... so not a great run and was definitely wanting better. I was also disappointed to come in as last Kent, I just wanted a better run and prove to myself I am capable on a tough course. It was great though being part of such a fab team and it was a amazing experience and one I won't forget for a while. I look forward to hopefully being selected again next year to return stronger to this course. I have English schools this weekend, which I am so so excited for. I am travelling up on the Friday and back on Saturday evening after the race so it will be a busy weekend!
G x I am writing this post nearly a week later after my race, tucked up in the warm on my final snow day off school. It hasn't all been fun and games with the snow because I was in the middle of mock exams when the Beast from the East paid a visit. Instead school gave us to the exams to do at home... not much fun when I could be out in the snow. Anyway more back to the topic of my race, I had the national xc champs last weekend at Parliament Hill, it was a tough one for me and I certainly didn't come out of the race with the result I was hoping for. As you might know over the last few weeks I had been struggling with some shin problems and had to take some time off running just before nationals, which wasn't ideal and was upsetting for me because I felt like I was in good shape. By the time Nationals came around, luckily I was back running and had a couple of sessions under my belt going into the race. I knew what the course was like and had prepared myself mentally, for the challenging hills and soft ground. Following a walk of the course I had checked out every single hill I was ready to face the race. I soon found myself on the start line, looking up a the huge hill which faced me in my first 500m of the race. This hill is huge and really challenging... it certainly didn't disappoint and I made it to the top, somewhat tired! The course was 6km and made of two laps of about 2km and 4km, however the marshals sent us the wrong way on the first lap which added 800m. To start with a 6km race was one of my longest race distances, but to have it being nearly 7km on such a tough course was a recipe for disaster. Luckily I only realised the first loop was longer when I had finished so mentally I didn't really notice. I felt I started the race strong, not too quick but was in a good position. However about halfway in, I started to struggle and my legs felt exhausted. Mentally I was ready to hit these hills, but my body couldn't. The last 2km was certainly a mental test as people started to pass me and I knew I was much further back in the field than I should have been. At this point I wanted to just give it my everything and get around the course. I finally crossed the line in 89th place... far, far away from my target, but I had made it around the course. This course seriously challenged me mentally and physically. So, I may not have come out of this race with the result I wanted and it means I have had another bad nationals race, following last years bad race too. I do feel like I learnt a lot from it too, because the more experience I get with the larger fields of athletes the better. This will all help to building me to be a stronger athlete. Looking back now I can take positives from this race, whereas in the initial few days I was only seeing the bad. I have two races coming up in the following weeks English schools and Inter Counties. These are two races I have been looking forward to all season and I am ready to go into them and finish my season with two exciting races.
G x This weekend I have been in the Loughborough area, doing the England Talent Assessment weekend, for triathlon. I only found out that I got in to it, at the beginning of the week, and I knew that there was going to be some tough competition, and the best triathletes in my age group in England would be there! My age group was 17-19 and me being 16 but turning 17 later this year meant I was bottom of my age group. We travelled up on Friday as we would have had to wake up seriously early if we were going to travel straight there on the Saturday. We settled into our little hotel for the night after having some tasty dinner and then I got an early night in. Most of Friday night, I was thinking about my swim and if I didn't make my swim in under 12 minutes, I would be sent home, so I was pretty concerned as I had never swam 800m before against the clock... yes, I know it was a bit risky me coming all the way to Loughborough, if I didn't think I could swim the time. When I arrived on the Saturday I was instantly intimidated by everyone in their various different kit. Most of the people had British Triathlon hoodies, with various different academies or regional squads written on the back. I did not want to let this intimidate me though and after a bit of waiting we were soon sent into our first lecture. After a very interesting morning of lectures, and picking up some good knowledge on sleep, nutrition, selection policies and physio, we were finally sent off to do our swim... argggg the moment I had been waiting for. We did our swim in Loughborough university pool, which was amazing! It had been split in half so we had to do 32 laps, which sounds like lots, but I split it into 100s in my head, so it doesn't sound so long. The 30 second warning went, and then we were off. Up and down, up and down, up and down... with 400m done, I felt a sense of relief but I struggled to work out how fast I was going. Finally I came to the finish and the time keeper said '12:03,' my heart probably skipped a beat at this point, and I thought thats it... I'm going home. To add to this I was the last one to finish my swim out of the other 24 people in the pool... To be quite honest I didn't think I would get anywhere near this time, as I only started swimming less than a year ago and I think if I had done the 800m time trial, 6 months ago I would have struggles to even hit a sub 13:30 time. Anyway, onto Sunday. We were all set off from the start according to our swim times. So, lets just say I wasn't in the best of places at this point, I had a lot of catching up to do. The bike course was on an old air field and the course was made up of 4x 5km laps. Each lap had two dead turns, which you can see from this photo above. They meant that you had to slow down, to a snails pace to make sure you didn't go flying off course or end up on your bum. In the end, I got lapped... not ideal but I was close, so so close not to be. This just meant all lapped runners had to start once the last cyclist was back, and then start about a minute later. The run was tough, after having a break between the cycle and the run my legs had started to seize and go all stiff. The sun started powering down on us and I could feel my back burning, but nothing a glass of water chucked over it couldn't sort out. Okay so I might of finished near the end of the field, but I have taken so much from this weekend. I now know so much I can work on, and goals I want to set myself. I have had a great weekend away too, and visiting Loughborough uni. I am currently still on easter holidays which I am loving, although I have lots of work to do.
Love G x So last weekend was Nationals, yes I'm sure lots of you already know this probably because you either raced it or were bombarded with photos on Instagram from it. On the run up to Nationals, I had been very busy and had an intense week at school, as I had got back from Boston on the Tuesday and had been given piles of homework following this, oh and not to mention the fact I was still injured, wasn't helping the stress levels! I was eventually given the all clear to run on the Thursday before Nationals so I was quick to get down to my club for an easy run in preparation for nationals. It got to Friday and I was feeling pretty stiff following only an easy run the day before, but I knew I was better off running on the Thursday and perhaps being stiff on the Saturday, than going into Saturday not have run for 2.5 weeks. Straight after school on Friday, I quickly made my way down to the coach meeting point, to be picked up by the coach up to Nottingham. The coach journey was about 4 hours, so my usual dinner was altered slightly... well it was just cold and in a tubberware pot, and it was followed by some little snacks. We arrived at about 8:30pm at the hotel and I went pretty much straight to my room to sort all my kit out for the next day and soon enough I found myself in bed, trying to get to sleep. I can't say I had the best night sleep, the bed was hard and I just felt quite uneasy so when I woke up, I felt like I had pulled an all nighter partying. Anyway off I went to breakfast with my little microwaveable pot of porridge and I politely asked the waiter to microwave it. However I had clearly not seen the big pot of porridge on offer, from the buffet breakfast and was bluntly told by the man working there, that the hotels porridge was better and there is no point him going off to microwave mine. I quickly demolished my bowl of porridge with the toppings of nuts, seeds, banana, granola and some honey - it was very tasty to be fair to the waiter. Soon enough we were on the coach on the way to the park, for everyone's race but mine was the first one, which was 11:00am. I jumped off the bus and the group of us quickly went to walk the course, which was a small lap then a medium lap. When we walked the course we soon realised that there were some obstacles we had to get through... aka a river/swamp which was knee high in places and it did not smell very nice at all! However I was thankful for the fact that the course as a whole was not very hilly. After my warm up, with stretches and drills, we were all hurried along through a tent and out into our pens on the start line. I knew Nationals was a big race but looking down the start line, it seemed that there were endless amounts of people, which turned out to be just short of 300. The start was very quick as everyone started charging down the first straight. It was very busy and I was running about 6 people a breast. But trying to get around the corners was tricky and I found myself either get caught in in the middle and getting cut up, or going around the wide way of a corner... not ideal. The first small lap went relatively quickly but my legs felt pretty unresponsive and I just couldn't seem to get my teeth into the race. I was struggling to pick out people I knew, who were my sort of pace to hang onto, but I ended up just sort of running with the people around me and not pushing on forwards. This theme didn't really change and as I got to halfway around my second lap and this is when I have started to push the pace normally nothing really happened. At this point I was absolutely covered in mud, pretty much from head to toe. My feet weighed double as they did to the start and as I was charging through the last swamp, I made the mistake of slowing down slightly and that was just the worst thing to do as I found myself just sinking into the mud even more and was reduced to almost a walk. I eventually crossed the finish line in 140th, covering the 5km course in about 22:55... and I have one word to describe that and that is a 'disaster.' It might sound weird for me now to turn around and say that I had great fun, for the day as the whole, but I certainly wasn't happy with my run. This was my first Nationals and also the end to my first cross country season, and it is fair to say I have had great fun. This weekend, I will be looking back and reflecting over the end of the season. After the race I was very very muddy, but I still had the whole day of supporting everyone else at the club, so I hurried up to like a farmyard area, where I found a hose. Yes a hose, and yes it was absolutely freezing but I did manage to wash most of the mud off my legs and then I quickly ran into the toilets and put my legs under a hand dryer to warm them up. For the rest of the day my friends and I cheered on all the other age groups and at the end of the day we got to watch the senior men, which was pretty incredible. There were just under 2000 men running and when they all started charging past us, it was really cool, and also unbelievable how quickly they were going, especially because their course was 12km. We got to cheer on our coach too, which was great fun chasing him around the course to make sure he heard us on each lap. Amazingly the TAC senior men won the team race, which was the first time this had happened, which is so good and the whole club was so so happy when we found out! On the Saturday evening we had the end of season dinner, which I had been excited for, for ages as it was a chance to swap the wet, muddy spikes for heels, which is always nice every now and again. We had a sit down meal and there were awards and speeches, which were really great to hear, especially as I am a newbie to the club and I got to know some of the other people at the club better too. Overall I had a great weekend, and won't be forgetting it for a long time. Sorry this post is a bit late, but because I was so busy all weekend, I didn't have the chance to write this post as I had to spend most of my Sunday either travelling back from Nottingham or catching up with missed work from Saturday school and homework.
I hope you all have a good week! G x All of Friday at school all I could think of was the relays, as I was pretty excited. The club was travelling up on Friday evening to a hotel an hour from Mansfield. So, as I like to start any race blog post, I talk about my carbonara pasta, but this time it was slightly different to normal. This was because I was eating it on the coach from a tuba wear box, so it isn’t exactly different just a bit cold… Anyway the journey to the hotel went pretty quickly (which was helped by sitting next to Clara). When we got to hotel we were quickly in our rooms and ready for bed… okay not quite, we had a little tea party and a chat before bed, as we had arrived at 8pm. I know I go to bed early, but not that early! At 6:30am my alarm goes off and being slightly disorientated, it takes me a while to realise what was happening. The beds at the hotel were possibly the best I have ever had (and we are talking about a Holiday Inn right now), this made getting out of bed that bit harder. We headed to breakfast to find no porridge, but panic over, because I had brought a sachet of porridge with me. I swiftly asked the lady at breakfast if she could just add some hot milk to it for me and luckily that was fine. We step off the coach and the quick realisation of how cold it was, quickly hit us! I went from 2 layers to 4 within 10 minutes of being outside. We walked the course after almost immediately getting there, it didn’t take us long considering it was only 2.5km, which I wasn’t completely a fan of, but I just thought at least I won’t be running for long. Soon enough I was on my warm up and for once my legs felt good and like they had lots of energy. I did some drills then some strides, so then I headed to the holding pen, where all the athletes who were running the third leg went. I was pretty nervous about running the third leg, but before I knew it Clara was charging up the last hill and I was off. First I headed off through the open field and then I headed into the woods. It was a lovely course but in the woods all the tap going in different directions was slightly confusing as it all sort of merged into one. I would like to say that I came flying out the woods into the final field but I didn't, my legs felt slow and I didn't have much left in me. People started to over take me and this definitely pushed me down, but I knew I had to do it for my team. The cold air made breathing hard, but at the end of the day everyone was in the same boat so I tried to get on with it. The last 500m was painful and I was just trying my absolute best and in the end we came home in 8th. This was a great result but I had started my leg in 4th so clearly I wasn't that happy. At the end of the day my relay team did really well and Phoebe even got the fastest overall leg, which is pretty impressive. Unfortunately Saturday wasn't my day and I didn't have the magic moment of energy, when I put my spikes on. Whether it was nerves because of the big event or travelling up and having a slightly different routine the night before, I will take it all as experience and learn from it. Sometimes I just have to remember how new I am to the sport and that there is a lot of learning involved, but of course you always want to do well. After my race it was fuelling time, which was helped by bounce and chia charge. I am obsessed with the coconut and macadamia bounce ball at the moment, so that was of course some of my lunch. I also enjoyed a nice bagel with peanut butter on... my fav! Once I had topped up the tank, I headed off to the stalls, where I picked up my new burgundy hoodie and a long sleeve top, which I was very excited about as I hadn't got an event hoodie before (and I am still wearing it now, and have no intention of taking it off anytime soon!). They were also seriously reasonable, and good quality for how much I payed for them (£12 for the hoodie and £7 for the top). My new More mile kit kept me nice and toasty on the cold day and also looking pretty snazzy too, especially with these new leggings they have just realised! I am currently writing a More Mile review, which will be up sometime this week! Although I can't resist telling you how soft this long sleeve top is, and I was wearing it all day but when I got home I didn't want to take it off, (although the shower was definitely calling me by this point!) At the end of the day I had a great weekend, and loved my first major event! I am keen now to continue to get some solid training in this winter and hopefully improve for my upcoming Kent League's in a few weeks and I have a few school fixtures too. I hope you have all had a nice weekend! G x |
HelloI'm Grace, a 18 year old runner, and fitness fanatic. Join me on my crazy journey through life, squeezing in an adventure in every second of spare time I have. Archives
February 2019
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