National XC Championships, 25 Feb 2023

I love the national XC Champs, it's normally an epic muddy spectacle of the UKs best runners. The lack of rain this year though meant it was more of a grassy spectacle this time though - you probably could have gotten away without spikes. The event was held at Bolesworth Castle in Cheshire and we drove up from Cambridge the morning of the race. We set off with plenty of time in the bag, but we hadn't anticipated the queue to get into the venue. With only one entrance to the venue, the local roads were backed up in about 6 directions and we spent about 50 minutes sitting in the queue. I arrived with only chance for a quick pre-race wee before heading straight to the start line.

I found my fellow Highgate Harriers on the line and waited for the gun. Unfortunately I immediately got caught behind a slow runner who had no business being on the front line. The 2 seconds I lost behind her were enough to get me stuck much further back than planned as the course quickly formed a bottleneck and I just couldn't get through. I felt like I spent the entire race overtaking after that. Oh well, not every race is perfect and fighting to claw back those lost places probably made me run harder. Happy with my pace though, which would have been a 10km PB if I'd continued for another 2km and on a XC course. Possibly a sign that I should run more 10km races!

The course was nothing special, just boring grass and I finished with not a single splash of mud up my legs. How disappointing. Normally I'd be moaning about how the men's and women's races aren't equal distance at the point (8km women and 12km men), but on this occasion I was happy not to have to run around that boring course again! Still, another good opportunity to run hard and all good training.

Emily Young