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
1 Comment
3/26/2018 04:51:38 am
This is one of the things I missed most in school. I used to join all the school marathons back when I was in school. I guess this is the reason why a lot of adults get dread diseases. We don't have a lot of high octane activities anymore when we all start working. Most of us spend eight hours sitting in front of our desks. This sedentary lifestyle will kill us faster than we can imagine. Companies should take care of their employees more. They should give them enough hours to rest and do some physical activities.
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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
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