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National Cross Country Championships
My 20th run at "The Nationals" and still bloomin' hard work, I really should stop one year - give me the Carnethy Hill Race any day! 3 laps of Callander Park in Falkirk - not too much mud, hardly any hills (110 metres ascent) but lots of slow hard effort - heart rate at average of 162 bpm (90% max) for the whole of my 52 minutes plod. Had my usual first lap of "oh God I'm knackered and useless, just drop out", steadied a bit for the 2nd lap and then hung on a bit on the last lap to catch Steve Bell masquerading as a Helensburgh AC runner but just failed to catch Simon. New Westies recruit Owen led us home followed closely by Nigel and Chris, while Simon was just ahead of me and Pete completed the team. Mark Pollard of Inverclyde AC won the race in about 38 mins for the 2nd year in a row. Earlier the Westies Wummin had ran well, Ellie leading home Cat, Pauline and Pat. Suffice to say the soup and chips that Cat treated us too afterwards were probably the highlight of the day. Will I be back next year for my 21st, mmmmm?
Posted by John Donnelly on Sat 23 Feb 2008 | 5 comments
Category cross country
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Comments
jd said...
Ignore the above "photos" hyperlink, the photos are actually here
Saturday 23rd February 2008 11.37pm
cat said...
Cross country is great. .... run as fast as you can (which is much much slower than all the other whippet like girls ahead, but who cares!!) around a fab grassy and slightly undulating course through a lovely bit of a very windy Callander Park.
I had a fab day on Saturday. Great company and chat before and after the run. Then a really enjoyable run round the park. Ellie shot off and was up there with the fast folks, I managed to get the legs going and after a really slow start spent the race trying to catch the million people who'd blasted past me, Elspeth did well especially since she said she goes backwards in the wind, Pauline put in yet another fine run for the westies ladies and Pat finished incredibly strongly. All the westies ladies did really well and we ended up as something like 16th team out of about 27. Well done girls.
Saying all that - I suppose if us girls had to do three laps of the course rather than our girlie two, I might be less keen on the event! Hope equal rights never gets to cross country!
Sunday 24th February 2008 6.10pm
Ellie said...
Hear hear! It was great to see the hardcore racers back for another blast of muddy fun, and especially pleased to see Cat back on her-slightly-less-shoogly-pins again. While she made it look easy, and finished smiling in a fantastic time, given her time 'oot', I went to hell and back by setting of ridiculously fast and pedalling backwards for the next thirty odd minutes. That meant I was overtaken by many of my hill-racing peers, which nearly led me to leap into the lake half way round the course in stroppy defeat. However, I did enjoy the first 30 seconds of adrenalin rush, and snapping away at the gentlemen's race when my legs stopped wobbling. Well done to all who raced...including the dejected, defeated and delirious amongst us.
Monday 25th February 2008 9.16am
Chris said...
Saturday was a miserable experience for me. My right foot and ankle were too sore to run properly, and the pain and discomfort gradually wore me down, so it wasn't so much a race, it was more just counting down the time until I could stop! Fairly annoying - but I guess I'll just need to rest for a bit now...
Well done to the other stalwart Westies who made the effort to run, and in particular new recruit Owen O'Neill who had a storming run to finish as first Westie home in the men's race with a death or glory sprint past Nige at the end.
Monday 25th February 2008 2.23pm
Chris said...
Some more photos posted here:women's race | men's race
Monday 25th February 2008 2.40pm