I had my first taster of how Cross Country might possibly pan-out last Wednesday at the Bounders handicap night – 3 laps around the cricket and football fields and the race track – none of which I knew previously were there…running has done much for teaching me the local area! I’d turned up to that in completely the wrong shoes – forgetting until I got there that I was intending to wear my trail shoes, I had put on my trusty road shoes by mistake. The poor things are now a very different colour and slightly damp. I hope they will forgive me!
I was determined not to make this mistake on race day, and I had also figured by this point that my trail shoes were also probably not going to cut it if I wanted to still have them for trail running by the end of the season…so my trusty trash-em pinkies have found a new role in life – Glycerins for road, Cascadia’s for trail, pink canoes for cross country! I had to empty them of all the sand or mud I’d got into them last time I wore them…may have been Otterburn that was responsible for that one.
My plans to leave were scuppered by my sudden fretting about irrelevant things, and I was twitchy anyway as I’d discovered that morning that my Bounders vest was in the bottom of the washing basket and disgusting – so that was frantically washed and fortunately being a sports vest had dried on the airer by the time I needed to leave. P was kindly coming with me to wave and support (and drive me home afterwards!) and we did actually make it there in time for me to empty my trainers of the last run’s mess and find my team tent and my race number. It was bigger than we’d anticipated – 2 fields covered in cars, and 10 races being run with teams from all over the North-East. I ran with the ‘slow’ women’s wave, and there were 388 runners just in the race I did!
Blue Runnings 