I'm enjoying the team aspect of the cross country (and to a lesser extent the road relays etc). When I run on the fells, I am always the only one from my club, although may be dragging someone along to the Cardington Cracker in December!

I'm looking at it as a fantastic way to keep competitive and hopefully build my speed and fitness through the winter.

I was always terrible at running at school, so I thought. In the obligatory playground races I was always at the back (i still don't like short distance races!!), but entered the school cross country aged around 12 and somehow came 2nd. So went to the town cross-country and stunned myself by coming 5th. I'm pretty sure i was then in the county team, but not 100% on that. Kept it up to some extent through secondary school but really football took over.

In the last few years which i played football my fitness really went downhill (too much time in the pub), but when i got heavily into Muay Thai my running picked up again as it was needed as part of traditional fight build-up, to maintain weight and cardio fitness, as well as sprints. here i am a couple of years later with fell running as my main passion and after joining a club it's the natural thing for me to get back to the cross country.