Naomi in 5 mile cross country shocker

A 5 mile cross country race isn't really my bag, however, after 13 marathons in 11 weeks, I needed a break from all the travelling as much as from all the miles. Plus it was Mark's birthday so it seemed a bit rude to wander off to do my own thing, yet again, after he'd given up several of his weekends to keep me company. Plus, the alternatives were the LDWA Steppingley Step (muddy fields, increasingly soggy and disintegrating written instructions on sheets of A4, lots of boredom, lots of stiles, lots of shuffling, negligible running), Gower (the only race I've DNFed purely because it was so blinkin' miserable, hooning down with rain, swamplike underfoot and bound to take over 6 hours), and the triple marathon over the Ridgeway (sleeping on a school floor, cold showers, wet kit, covered in endless mud, most people getting lost and finishing in the dark). I could have gone to France for the Nice-Cannes marathon that looked fabulous but that was a bit much with 2 foreign maras already booked in for November. So it was a marathon free weekend.

Mark had entered his club's Autumn Challenge, saying it was the best race ever for reasons I never quite managed to pin down. Still, I knew that if he went off to run a race on Sunday morning and it was remotely decent weather, I'd feel far too jealous stood on the sidelines cheering him on. So I entered. The Autumn Challenge is 5 miles (too short), off road (too non-tarmac), on grass (too slippy and tussocky), and muddy trails (too muddy and slippy), and hilly (ok, I don't mind this bit). It also suggested the course would "take a short spike". I have never heard this sort of language in any race I have entered before, it was a little intimidating. I wore road shoes and hoped in vain for dry weather in the few days leading up to the race.

It was mild and dry and even sunny on Sunday morning so the back up plan of just ditching it wasn't required. A 20 minute walk to the start plus maybe 5 minutes of trotting about on the grass was a half arsed attempt at loosening up but the autumn challenge for me was concentrating on running hard right from the start rather than ambling off at a very pedestrian pace before taking about 4 miles to realise what I'm doing and to start thinking about running as I usually do in marathons. It passes a bit of time, ok?

The start was up a shallow hill, on grass and quite slippy. Happily, the bulk of it was on varying degrees of muddy trail which was far more tolerable, indeed, I've done plenty of off road marathons on worse terrain, plus none of the hills were very long. Of course, at eyeballs out pace, they're a lot more unpleasant but at least my road maras have taught me that you can run up hills, unlike trail maras and ultras where hills are almost obligatory to walk. I was passed by quite a few people in the first mile as the field shook itself out, by next to noone in the middle 3 miles (where I took a few back) and by only a couple in the last mile. Which suggests that while my top gear is reasonably sustainable, I definitely had no more pace for the finish.

Despite feeling minor dread and perhaps because of such low expectations, I rather enjoyed running to the point where it felt like my lungs were about to explode for 40 minutes. It feels more efficient to know you're covering ground as fast as you can rather than scuffing about and taking forever. I don't like wasting time. It's also quite nice to feel more competitive than usual, it's been all too easy to think "stuff it, I've run 48 marathons this year, I've got nothing to prove" and ease off (see drifting times and abominable training passim) so this was rather refreshing. I had no expectation of time so with the terrain and hills was quite satisfied with 40'59 for 5.12 miles, bang on 8'00 minute miling. Same as my 1/2 marathon pace, same as the pace I've maintained for 16 miles in a marathon. Proof that I don't have much acceleration.

Targets were as follows:

1. Don't injure myself - done
2. Don't hate it too much - done
3. Don't fall over - done
4. Don't embarrass myself - done, I was 46th out of 146 overall, 11th of 51 ladies and 3rd of 17 senior ladies.
5. Don't embarrass Mark by beating him on his birthday race - done, he did himself proud with 6th overall and 1st MV40. And yes, I hadn't a chance in hell of beating him.