Surrey XC League Mitcham, 15 Jan 2021

I’m not the biggest fan of cross-country races - they are muddy, hilly and really, really hard work. However, time and time again I find myself entering yet another… this time a 8.5km XC race on Mitcham Common as part of the Surrey League. I haven’t raced much with my local club Clapham Chasers so I thought it would be a nice opportunity to represent and meet some new people!

The weather conditions were perfect- dry, a little cold but with the sun shining down, vest and shorts appropriate! I have raced at Mitcham a couple of times before in my old university league so I was familiar with course. However at uni we would only do 2 laps ≈ 5km, this time it would be 3 laps 😅 I was amazed by the number of women who turned up to race - 221! 

I had not at all tapered for this and was going in with the mindset of enjoying, trying my best and at the end of it all, it would be a good bit of training! 

I went off strongly and was amongst the top few. I felt good but was incredibly bad at running downhill and was overtaken by quite a few ladies (work to be done there) I soon realised after 1 lap that I would not be able to sustain this pace for 3 laps so I eased off a little. The hills got progressively harder each time I went up them but I could put out some speed on the flat sections. The support from some of my fellow club members who were marshalling helped me round and I finished 69th in the field with a time of 37:24 .

Although painful, I had fun and met some new club members which was nice. I’ve even been somewhat persuaded to enter National X-Country Champs on 26th at Parliament Hill! Now to practise some downhill running…

Megan Powell