Cross Country 2023-24

[Travs]

2nd league fixture of the season today, back at the excellent Aldersley Village course in Wolverhampton, which is where i ran well in the Midlands Relays in October.

This time, about 80% of the course was frozen solid, and the other 20% was very slippy. I've ran XC in some terrible weather, and in the snow, but i don't recall ever running on ground which was totally frozen. It just about took a spike, although i considered wearing x-talons initially.

Personally, another good performance, my pace is looking considerably quicker than last season, and on tough ground today. Was 9th counter so scored in the 2nd six, and i think 3rd master, so made the first team there.

In October i averaged 3:54/km, but that was on good terrain and only 6km. Today averaged 4:00/km over 10km, so i was fairly pleased with that. A measure of the strength of the league..... there were a number of clubmates running today who are posting mid 18's in the Cov parkrun, and i dusted them by over a minute.... and i was still only about 150th today. If you're not capable of getting near 16mins for 5km then you can kiss goodbye to finishing in the top 100.

Team-wise, not seen results yet, but we had a stronger team than the first fixture and hopefully our firsts have pulled away a bit from any potential relegation danger.

Next one is in a fortnight.... the Warwickshire Champs at Warley Woods, Smethwick, probably my favourite XC course of all. Last year we won the team event, and i picked up a bronze in the masters team, hopefully we can have a similarly decent day.