It has been a few weeks since my last blog post and cross-country race, last weekend’s race I was particularly excited for, why?… because I was representing Kent at the Southern Inter counties for the first time. My usually Friday night before the race was the same as normal, with a big bowl of pesto pasta (I’ve converted from carbonara). I also came straight home from school on the Friday, which is always a nice treat when I have nothing after school. After a relaxed evening my alarm was set and I was all packed for my race. My alarm wasn’t crazy early which was nice as I was leaving at 9:40am which meant I didn’t go into school in the morning, which is always a bonus. We headed off to Oxford with a car full of layers and footwear ready for the elements that we were expected to be facing in Oxford. When we arrived, we had slightly less time than planned following some nightmare traffic getting into Oxford. I picked up my number and headed out to walk the course. The course consisted of two 3km laps which were actually relatively flat apart from one mound at the beginning of each lap, so I was quite happy about that. Before I knew it, I was already standing on the start line amongst a large number of u17s and u20s. The start was physical with people in 3 or 4 rows on the line, luckily I found myself only the second line back. There were a few initial tight corners which meant lots of people ended up fighting for positions. It was a relief for the initial km to be over and then suddenly the u17 and u20 split off on their separate paths and we were now just running with our own age groups. From then on, the field spread out a lot and I actually found myself mainly running with other Kent runners; four of us seemed pretty huddled together in the same part of the field. The ground throughout the course was so variable, parts were rock hard, frozen by the seriously low temperatures. However, others had really churned up by the time it came to our u20 race. Ideally, I think I should have gone for 12mm spikes and not 9mm as I was losing grip in a lot of places (I should have listen to dad with his advice to go for the 12mm). The final stretch was 600m around a field and my legs were giving up and I really lacked some speed at the end and was over taken in the last 200m. This is definitely an area which I need to improve on before the new year when I have lots of important races coming up. I think I finished in the middle of the field and was the 6th Kent scorer which I was happy about. The official results have all gone a bit wrong for the organisers but hopefully somehow, I’ll be able to see how I did officially. I hope everyone who was racing this weekend had good races and enjoyed this rather overdue blog post, but I’m sure you can imagine in my last year of school, work is pretty heavy at the moment. I am now on my Christmas holidays so there should certainly be more going on, on my blog and social media!!
Love G x
1 Comment
7/11/2018 07:49:23 pm
Congratulations on your participation in the race! It must have been difficult to study and train at the same time, but you were able to achieve it. Hard work paying off is one of the most satisfying feeling we could experience. Knowing that we pushed ourselves to our limits and having the best outcomes motivates us even more for the next challenges. Though there may be times wherein everything is not going our way, it is important to acknowledge our failures and shortcomings to be able to do better.
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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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