Frostbite XC Series Rd 2, Nene Park, 7 Nov 2021

This was my first race in the Frostbite XC series, and while it was chilly and windy enough to deserve the name, the conditions weren’t really classic XC - dry grass and paths meant road shoes and relatively fast times.

Charlotte Edwards Photography

After a reasonable warmup and a realisation that my legs felt pretty tired after a week of training, we lined up for the start, with over 500 people in the early melée after the off. I settled into a reasonable pace, trying not to be put off by the steady stream of people overtaking me, and focussed on the roughly 8km ahead of me on an unknown course. Inevitably I couldn’t keep up with the pace target I’d hoped for, but I did keep it fairly consistent, and managed to pick off a few other runners ahead of me. After a short but tough hilly section, we turned back towards the finish. I had a bit of a tussle with another runner, who had overtaken me but I managed to hold onto him. I tried to drop him on an uphill drag near the finish, but he held on and came back past me after this. Surprisingly I managed to find a finishing kick over the last few hundred metres, overtaking my competitor as well as 3-4 other people which I was pleased with.

I ended with sore legs, a large blister and a sense of satisfaction of a reasonable run. Later finding my placing of 167th didn’t exactly add to the satisfaction!

Tim Phillips