I woke up to the rain chucking it down on my roof, which usually I am a fan of because I like listening to it, but on Saturday I wasn't too amused because I knew that I was going out to run in it. After my usual pre race breakfast of porridge with a banana (and not to mention my carbonara the night before), I was ready to go. I had wrapped up warm, although I was half debating whether it was skins weather or not, but in the end I realised I actually didn't have any skins at home, and that they were both at school, so that was that decided. After arriving the rain started to hold up, however there was still a very damp feel in the air. There was also the fact that there was a very sad tone to this race, because we all had Lucy and Stacey at the forefront of our minds. If you haven't heard these two girls were killed on Tuesday in a road traffic accident at just 16 and 17 years old. This is all too real for everyone in the running world, because they were hit when out on a club run, which we all do at our various clubs on a Tuesday and Thursday. Whilst warming up I got to have a quick catch up with Carlotta, which relaxed the tone. We held a minutes silence for Lucy and Stacey on the start line, which gave us all time to think of them before our race. Once we had all got ourselves together, before we knew it the gun went, (although this time it was a whistle because the officials gun broke). I felt like I had a good start for once and that I was ready to go. The first section of the course was around a field which was relatively flat, to my relief. However when we made the turn into the woods, we all knew we had one long climb to the top in front of us. I had previously had to think quite hard about what length spikes to put in because the ground was a lot wetter than previous races, however there was a lot of stoney sections, so in the end I went for my 9mm. The decent down was tricky, because it was very uneven, tree roots were everywhere, and there were lots of corners. When I made it down into the last field I was next to two other girls and I soon realised we will be battling it out until the end. With 200m to go I didn't have anything left in my legs and I came in 11th, behind these two girls. I have pretty mixed feelings about this because two weeks ago I came 9th, and I was really aiming to improve on this, but it just wasn't to be on Saturday. I will continue to train hard through the winter, as I am keen to keep progressing and build up my fitness. Each race just makes me more and more motivated to keep at it! It was nice being combined with the U20s too in the race, as it made the field bigger and it also meant I could race with Lucy and Emilia :D I have had a very busy weekend with a duathlon today following yesterday's XC race. I will be writing a blog post on that some time this week, but I have a lot of work at the moment, so I need to get that done before writing my next blog post. I hope you have all had a nice weekend and if you were racing you wore a black ribbon to remember Stacey and Lucy. I am now waiting on whether I have been selected to race for Kent, however my chances are quite slim but I guess you never know.
G x
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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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