I've had a manic January! The three races I was meant to have run have, with delays, finally been run, as of the 8th of February. I had been training well and was looking forward to the upcoming races at the beginning of January. The first race: Essex champs, Colchester. The distance: 5.3k. It was a horrible day- cold, wet and to top it all off I'd just been sick (not the best time for that, before a race!). To say I wasn't looking forward to it would be something of an understatement... It was a flat course, quite muddy and it was too short. So the race didn't suit me. Apart from that though, everything was just dandy... Being a runner though I had to put my head down and grit my teeth! (as I'm sure you all know that us runners we, kind of perversely, enjoy pain? Why else would we put ourselves through it?!)I finished the race a place behind my team mate in around 15th (however I can't be sure, no place tokens were given out- what's up with that?) with a poor run... our team came 5th... out of 5. So lets move on. Quickly.
The next race was at apex, 6.4k - you only have to look at the photos to see the conditions! It was horrendous! This was the penultimate Essex league race and if all went well we would be in with a shout at the team trophy! Neither Basildon, nor Chelmsford had a full team out (they were first and third in the overall league table)! We would go top! I twisted my knee and finished as fourth scorer, directly behind my team mates in 17th to record our best team placing a yet! 14-17th!
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| A slightly muddy course at Apex! |
The third and final race that I was supposed to be competing in was, to my dismay, cancelled for those that finished in the latter qualifying positions (5-8). The original race, the race to qualify for the borough team, was run at Blenheim park and I finished 8th with a slight calf strain (as mentioned in a previous blog entry). because of the recent bout of torrential weather it was called off several times until eventually, due to the little time left before the next round, they decided to only run with 1st up to 4th from each borough. Which meant that I wasn't included, neither was my team-mate... :( We continued to train though, because, although we were disappointed, we had the final race of the Essex league to come and we were in pole position...
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| U17 Men Essex Cross Country Champions: Benfleet RC! |
Soon it's track season... not my favourite time of the year at all, but I'll be hoping to do a few PBs and improve for the 10k season which I'm looking forward to... The next few tests for me include Park run, Crown 2 Crown and my GCSE exams...
Keep running and reading!
Eddy
