x-country season begins!

I was going to call it x-country fun but fun would suggest that i was smiling and enjoying myself and whilst i did smile for parts where i could spare the energy, mostly i was grimacing as the effort required was well beyond what i thought it would take and more importantly what i had judged for.

In long races i pride myself on clever tactics, usually i catch and pass loads of people in the last 10% of races, however in the shorted ones of late i have been making a right balls! of it. I ran a 3.31 first km in the shannonvale 10km last month and yesterday in clonakilty i did something similar, but to be fair to me, my error in judgement was down to the fact that i had no real idea how much harder running on 6 inchs of grass is compared to the road.

It was a 7000metre race and i thought go out like its a 5km and hang on, man was i wrong.
Running in wet sand anyone! I heard that when Sir roger bannister finally broke the 4 minute barrier for the mile he had done a lot of training on sand dunes in his native New-Zealand and i am thinking i may need to head to the long strand for some sandy sessions myself if i am to keep up this XC lark :)

I also was having a super race with a guy who was 20 metres ahead of me for most of the race and had to dig very deep to pass him in the final 200 metres, i think we both gave it everything and the last 100 metres i reckion we ran at 12  minute mile pace! such was the battle royal we had before this. I hope i am not painting a bad picture of my day out, because in truth it was very nearly the perfect type of race for me, it was on grass, it was super cheap, close racing and pushed me maybe beyond my limit and also my kids got to watch in safety and away from cars, plus my daughter was able to race her first xc race, something i always said i would get them to do, and she is hungry for more as am i.

This kind of running is the definition of grass roots (pun intended!) and for these people to give up there sunday morning to (flawlessly) organize these events in the wind and rain, purely for the love of the sport is almost touching in the money mad world we live in.I and my whole family are truly grateful.