Frostbite XC Rd 3 St Neots, 11 Dec 2022

My first cross country run of the season, after being busy with cyclocross and my half marathon. This was in Priory Park in St Neots, a route I haven’t done before, but it was promised to be all offroad and spike-friendly - finally a chance to wear the spikes I bought in 2020 and haven’t got to use yet?!

The weather on the day was freezing - literally - at -2°C and the ground was rock hard so spikes again didn’t seem ideal and I stuck with my trail shoes after a course recce. The course is 3 laps but with some changes each lap which made it interesting, and some elevation on the back half of the lap. It was so foggy that it was difficult to see much of the course and I was worried I had got lost on my warmup, ending up doing a full lap of the course in the wrong direction and just about getting back in time! The cold conditions meant I stuck with a long sleeve top under my BRJ vest, as well as hat and gloves, but I did brave shorts.

After the usual chaotic start I settled into a decent rhythm and the pack spread out over the first hill so traffic was never much of an issue when we got to the wooded sections. I kept to my pace target and finished fairly strongly, though I did start to flag on the 3rd uphill section through the woods. I managed to pass a couple of people in the last km, but one of them came straight back past me in the last few hundred meters and she left me for dead! I placed 107th out of about 550 riders (and was a scoring runner for my club) so reasonably happy, with a time of 35:55 for the 8km run.

Tim Phillips