Happy New (and muddy) Year!

After a fab Xmas and New Year celebrations, in which time training kind of fell by the wayside, and food and alcohol took over my life…I had a race to do - today!

It was another XC (my second ever) but this time it was for the Greater Manchester XC Championships and I’d been gently pushed into doing it by my coach as ‘practice’ for the Manchester League final in Feb.

*Also note that for the past week (and probably because I let myself relax over Xmas), I’ve been FULL of snot, and haven’t run for 4 whole days. That’s a lot for me, I was getting withdrawal symptoms ill have you know!!*

Its been another wet week (?!) so the course was full of puddles and as senior ladies run at 1:30pm after all the youths, the course is really churned up…mud pie!

I checked out the course map at the clubhouse and it was 2 ‘small ‘ laps and 2 ‘large’ laps (7, 800m total distance), but there was no profile of the course and on a map it looks pretty flat!!! BUT I had heard it was a hilly course…boy that was an understatement-MOUNTAINOUS!!!

Ok this make its not look to bad, but it really was hilly!!

I was pretty much caked in mud 30 seconds after the starting gun, 1^st 2 laps were nice a flat, but muddy all the same, so far so good, then the 3^rd lap diverted us down a massive hill and I realised that if we go down, we gotta get back up again! (see troubled look on my face in photo!!!)...

eeeeekkkk its a hill

Mind you going down was treacherous enough, dodging tree roots,  deep puddles, and the odd attempt at a path which when you don’t expect it, can be a disaster - good job I had my ankle taped. Then I saw it (actually it was the girls in front of me stopping to walk that made me realise there was the killer hill).

I managed to ‘run’ (loose term as my pace somewhat slowed!) up it the first time, but second lap I’ll admit I actually ran-walked, I thought I was going to die. The cheering supporters helped me along and I eventually saw the most welcome finish line, I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased to see those 6 letters before!

Can’t wait to do this again…*sarcastic tone*!

Note the relief on my face FINISH!

Oh and the guys had to do FOUR lap…hahahahahahaha!!!!