East Midlands XC League – Long Eaton

Fancying something a bit different on a spare Sunday Mrs Beeston Runner and myself decided we’d have a go at a Cross Country race. One of the benefits of having joined our local running club Beeston AC was that we get free entry into various local leagues. As it’s still technically winter that meant XC races.

As it happened the race was just down the road in Long Eaton, so no real excuses. Except we didn’t have the required club vests, but that didn’t take long and we soon had some more Ron Hill kit to add to the collections:

Not having one one of these before we weren’t sure what the signing on process was so we headed across with plenty of time in case we needed to sort out numbers and safety pins.

Turns out we needn’t have rushed too much! Nice simple organisation. Turn up, run, and as you cross the line you’re given a position token just like a Park Run.which then you hand to the team Captain. Pretty simple.

The course was pretty flat without too much horrendous mud. A lap was ~2.5km with ladies doing 2 laps and gents doing 3. I didn’t bother with a recce as I was pretty confident that unless anything went massively wrong for lots of other people I’d always have someone to follow.

At 11:00 there was a mass start with every one setting off together. Tightly bunched for the first 400m would be an understatement. In future I’m goint to try to be closer to the front. But soon we started spreading out a bit.

Once we’d gone through the trees for the first time I started to steady up the pace a bit having gone out too fast. A nice fast run along the bank around the park and then a quick drop down the side:

Then a short section with another bank up and down back to the start line. Only 2 more laps to go!

They pretty much carried on like the first one. I got myself into a decent pace, which seemed to match up with Patrick who seemed to know a lot of marshalls but was always in front of me. I got a bit less apprehensive about the drop down each time. But I could also feel Saturday’s 19 miles tugging at the legs as well so tried to keep myself in check.

Towards the very end of lap 3 I saw Mrs Beeston Runner turning on to the finish straight so I put a spurt on, and we ended up crossing the line together.

Came in 42nd male in 36:45. Happy with that, and please with my positioning in the club’s runners as well, 5th and 2.30 behind the first Beeston AC man home

So that was the end of the XC season, so looking forward to the Notts AAA Summer league now.